UBRARY A OF CONGRESS. 
<j^ 

Chap,_V— - Copyright No, 

Shell. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE HOPE OF HIS CALLING; 



OR, 



THE ANOINTED LIFE. 



BY 



EVANGELIST J. R. GOODPASTURE, M.A, 




^ - 



NASHVILLE, TENN. : 

The Cumberland Press. 

1899. 







The Library 
of Congress 

I — 

WASHINGTON 






Copyrighted, 1899, 

By J. R. Goodpasture, 

Nashville, Tenn. 

TWO COPIES RECEIVED 



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'&W& of Go$ 



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CONTENTS. 

Introduction v 

The Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation 1 

Jesus' Human Personality in Contradistinction 

to His Godhead , 9 

The " New Man " in Us, Created in the " Image " 

of the Human Soul of Jesus 18 

The Endowments of Jesus' Humanity, Compared 

With Our Own 29 

Two Sanctifications in the Human L,ife of Jesus . 39 

Sanctification of Nature in Contradistinction to 

Sanctification of Conscious Eife, or " Walk " 54 

Conscious and Unconscious Spiritual Eife Dis- 
tinguished 64 

The Spirit's Relations to Conscious Spiritual Eife 74 

The Carnal State 83 

The Anointed Eife , 91 

Pentecost and Sanctification 102 

Jesus Eed of the Spirit 120 

Jesus' Doctrine Given Him 126 

Jesus "Anointed and Sent" to Preach the Gos- 
pel 133 

What is Entire Consecration ? 145 

The Fruits of Entire Consecration 153 

A Perfect Man the Stature of the Fulness of 

Christ 161 

As the Father Eoved Jesus, so Hath He L/Oved :? 
Us 170 

(iii) 



INTRODUCTION- 



The experience of spiritual people is identical except 
in degree. There is, in fact, but one highway of holi- 
ness, but it has many mile boards, and men have made 
many side tracks about it. The Christian life from 
alpha to omega is a given life- — a life from God — and it 
is exactly the same in every one, so far as the expe- 
riences involved in it are concerned. It has a begin- 
ning, and ordinarily a long line of development. Jesus' 
life — the substance of spiritual life — is a distinctive and 
perfectly defined thing in the world of spiritual enti- 
ties. If we walk "even as He walked/' we must of neces- 
sity walk as each other walks. If we walk "in . His 
steps," our feet must all alike press the same footprints. 
Now, we may tramp around a great deal, and make 
many tracks of our own in getting to and trying to fol- 
low this life, but none of these side tracks are of course 
any part of the divine life in us. 

If in every instance the servant is to be "as his mas- 
ter/' then the various servants must in that respect be 
alike themselves, and in that respect only are they truly 
Christian. Christian experience therefore is, and ever 
has been, an identical experience in all its details. The 
way from a "babe in Christ" to a full grown man in 
Christ, is a way that has undergone no changes in all 
the ages. It has no forks, nor high cuts, nor parallels. 
It is one way — the "straight and narrow way," so 
straight and narrow that his feet who travels it must 
^all successively in the footprints of Jesus, and of all 
who have followed Him in the past. 
(v) 



vi Introduction. 

Why, then, should there be so much confusion among 
us, so many theories and dogmas? How does it hap- 
pen that spiritual people, who have gone far on the 
great highway, and who have an identical experience so. 
far as they have gone, should take such pains to dif- 
ferentiate themselves from each other, and to explain 
that they do not hold to the same theory of holiness 
and would not be confounded with each other? This 
is a question for good people to think about, and, if 
possible, to account for and correct. Eeasoning from 
our premise that two lives cannot be like Jesus' life 
and be different from each other, that two travelers 
cannot "walk by the Spirit" "even as He walked," "in 
His steps," and travel diverging highways, we believe, 
and cannot help believing, that in the degree we are 
in fact Christian — Christ-like — in experience and walk, 
we are like each other; and, believing this, we think we 
might and should know each other better, and entertain 
views more in common, and certainly in greater charity 
towards each other. Why may we not hope for the 
prayer of Jesus that we "may be one" to find fulfillment 
not in unity of experience only, but in unity of co- 
operation in his service? 

Our wish and effort has been, without giving inten- 
tional offense to any, to be a blessing to all our fellow- 
travelers, by accounting for misapprehensions, misno- 
mers, and unwarranted distrust among those who have 
an identical blessing, and have pressed each other's 
footprints, as well as the Master's, in every step taken 
along the highway of righteousness. 

There is but one way to do this, and that is "by 
manifestation of the truth." There is no occasion for 
a timidly cautious, or conspicuously compromising 



Introduction. vii 

method of dealing with questions. Nobody is, or 
should be, asked to concede anything of his own con- 
victions. Men must be made to see things before they 
will or should embrace them. Hence a man should 
think he has something to show to his brethren before 
he has a right to ask their attention, and, so believing, 
should boldly and reverently, with the expectation that 
his motives will be appreciated, and the matter of his 
book given a fair and impartial examination by those 
who are as anxious as himself to see and embrace the 
truth concerning every proposition touching our most 
holy faith, seek to make his thoughts plain, that they 
may be weighed and judged by his fellows and given 
such influence in their lives as they seem to them to 
deserve. When this is done our mission is accom- 
plished. We can ask nothing more. We have no right 
to. 

In such a spirit these pages have been written and 
are now presented to the public. In preparing them 
there has never been a thought of promoting, or re- 
tarding, the interests of a denomination. We have, 
without apology or cringing, discussed any and all 
questions incidental to the main thread-thought of the 
book, that have presented themselves to our mind, and 
in doing so have unhesitatingly said whatever we be- 
lieved to be true. But we have in all cases done 
so with reference to the subject matter in hand only, 
and not as the apologist, or propagandist of a sectarian 
belief. These are things we care very little about. We 
are not only not sectarian, but are anti-sectarian. The 
question as to what any denomination believes or dis- 
believes, or as to what effect a sentence will have on 
the interests of any ecclesiastical organization, does not 



viii Introduction. 

exert a feather's weight with us. The age of ecclesias- 
tical straight jackets is passed. We have tried, with an 
unfettered mind, to write in the interest of truth, and 
have given no thought as to what is believed by others. 
We have done this, not that we lack respect for the 
views of our fellows, but that we think every one should 
speak the convictions of his own mind, and that beyond 
this he will, perhaps, advance the interests of truth 
more by silence than by rehashing what has been 
thought out by others, and lias not been so far digested 
and assimilated by himself as to become his own also. 
If it be true that Christian experience is always and 
in all persons the same, then apparent differences be- 
tween believers can be accounted for only by the va- 
rious explanations given as to the nature, causes and 
effects of these experiences. And this is no doubt the 
fact. Devout people of varying shades of belief on non- 
essential questions such as differentiate orthodox de- 
nominations; honest, humble and sincere people, who, 
it may be from mental moulding and environment, 
have not so much as questioned the certainty of the 
correctness of their theological belief in general, hunger 
and thirst after righteousness, and despite errors of be- 
lief in minor matters enter into great blessings, finding 
new and rich experiences of grace. These blessings are 
explained and accounted for, and their probable dura- 
tion, and after effects discussed, under the influence, 
often unconscious, of former general theological be- 
liefs. An Arminian and a Calvinist have an identical 
experience, and yet so divergent may their notions be 
as to its nature, causes and effects, present and pros- 
pective, that each will be careful not to be classed with 
the other. What a pity that the religious world has 



Introduction. ix 

thought best to fix such rigid and inflexible fetters 
upon thought that from the influence of mental 
moulding and environment, exactly the same thing in 
fact and truth will appear so different to brethren that- 
each will be afraid of the other's experience. Am I 
reminded that my own views will be affected in the 
same way? I will not deny that, unconsciously to me,, 
it may be so. The very atmosphere in which we are 
raised is impregnated with the peculiar views that 
happen to prevail in the vicinity. We breathe them 
into our lives, and are liable when unconscious of the 
fact to be more or less influenced by them. The chief 
general deductions of my book, however, are such as 
most spiritual people of all schools accept, and they are 
accounted for without the consciousness of denomina- 
tional bias. It is not expected that any reader will see 
things in detail as they have presented themselves to 
me. My hope is that each may, from many things said, 
find something that will edify, and nothing that will 
injure or tear down. Spiritual people have an expe- 
rience to support them, and they know it. This is 
simply a fact in their lives. It is a matter of conscious- 
ness 'and does not depend upon the support of reason 
any more than the consciousness of sight depends upon 
it. Whether, therefore 1 , they can agree with me in the 
matter of explaining this experience or not, they will 
see a kinship of spirit, and will continue as before to 
have the benefit of the experience itself. Credit me, 
then, with having the interests of every brother at heart, 
whatever may be his denominational name, and with 
sincere and fervent desire to do as much good to all as 
possible, and harm to none, and I am content to leave 
all else to your Christian judgment. 



THE HOPE OP HIS CALLING. 



THE SPIRIT OF WISDOM AND REVELA- 
TION. 

"That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father 
of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and 
revelation in the knowledge of Him: the eyes of your 
understanding being enlightened; that you may know 
what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of. 
the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is 
the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who be- 
lieve." x 

This prayer furnishes a basis for faith in asking great 
things for ourselves and others. It is offered by an in- 
spired apostle, whom we suppose knew what were 
proper subjects of prayer, and the manner and matter 
of acceptable prayer. He must, at all events, have 
prayed in the Holy Ghost in this instance, for his 
prayer, which need not have been recorded, so far as 
its answer is concerned, is nevertheless made a part of 
the scriptures and handed down to us without an inti- 
mation that there is anything at all wrong in it. It is a 
scriptural, and, therefore, an acceptable prayer. Hence 
we come to its study with one of the most important 
questions that arise to weaken faith, settled in our fa- 
vor: the things asked" for, are things God wills we 
should have. They belong alike to the inheritance of 



Eph. i. 17-19. 
(i) 



2 Thk Hope of His Calling. 

all saints. As a necessary inference, however, we may 
learn also, that they are to be obtained only as gifts 
in answer to prayer. Paul asked that they might be 
given "a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowl- 
edge of Him." Notice that the request is not for spe- 
cific knowledge. It was not for the Spirit Himself. 
They already had Him. He was in the "inner man" 
with power to do all things for them, and was, no 
doubt, doing many and great things for them. He had 
not left them in darkness. They had the light of life, 
and not a little knowledge of spiritual things. But 
here was a spiritual gift they did not have. He had 
not, in a definite and specific way, become to them a 
spirit of wisdom and revelation. 

There is a wide difference between the reception of 
specific revelations and the gift of a spirit of revela- 
tion. The latter involves the thought of an abiding 
teacher that is constantly, and permanently, to reveal 
to them the otherwise unlearnable things of God. What 
was it but the gift of an especial anointing of the Holy 
Ghost as the "Spirit of Truth" to become to them a 
constant and wonderful teacher, and revelator in spir- 
itual things, that He might thenceforth, in a special and 
fuller sense than hitherto, open to them the scriptures? 

Let us consider that such a gift does not necessarily 
involve revelations not already contained in the written 
word, but rather, the "eyes of their understanding be- 
ing enlightened," they see the truths already revealed 
in the Bible. Wandering without light in a dark 
cavern of the earth, I might pass many treasures. I 
tread upon gold dust and diamonds and all manner of 
precious stones. But I do not know it. The treas- 
ures are there in exhaustless abundance. They are mine 



Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation. 3 

just for the taking, but I do not see them. Let me 
strike a light, and behold how the room glistens and 
sparkles. Priceless treasures at once open to me. They 
are at my very hands, and I have nothing to do but to 
reach forth and appropriate all I can need. Yet there 
is nothing there that was not there before. Neither is 
it any nearer to me, nor any more freely mine. 

And let us be sure that all the treasures of this 
world, when we look at them as sources of blessing and 
joy, are not to be compared with the "riches of grace 
in Christ Jesus," as the same are revealed in the word. 
It is impossible that any soul should find a need that is 
not therein freely provided for. The treasures of His 
throne, which is declared to be a "throne of grace," are 
laid at our feet. But we cannot see. "The natural man 
Teceiveth not the things of the spirit of God: for they 
are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, 
because they are spiritually discerned." * "Eye hath 
not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the 
heart of man, the things that God hath prepared for 
them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto 
ns by his spirit." 2 "We have received, not the spirit of 
the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might 
know the things that are freely given to us of God." 3 
Let us not suppose that the Father wills we should re- 
main in ignorance of our heritage. Let us know as- 
suredly, on the contrary, that he desires to fully re- 
veal them unto us. But they must be revealed. Here, 
in this present time, we may see, and enter into riches 
that are unspeakable and full of glory — riches that ren- 
der the treasures of this world contemptible. What an 



1 1 Cor. ii. 14. 2 1 Cor. ii. 9, 10. 3 1 Cor. ii. 12. 



4 The Hopk of His Caujng. 

amazing spectacle it must be in the eyes of heaven that 
we should be groping onr way, doubtfully, as in a sort 
of spiritual twilight, lonely, destitute of spiritual joy,, 
with gloomy faces and heavy hearts, as though our Fa- 
ther cared not for us, when beneath our feet, by our 
very hands, at the door of the heart, on every side, we 
are compassed with riches of blessing at which angels 
wonder — ours — freely given to us, and we know it not. 
We cannot see. We need a "spirit of wisdom and rev- 
elation." 

Let us pause to consider that this was a gift the 
Ephesians did not have. It was for them. It was a. 
part of their heritage, but they did not have it. Do we 
sometimes imagine that to be a Christian and to grow in 
grace in those days was something different and easier 
than now? Let us not think so. God loves his people 
as well as ever he has loved them, and the bounty and 
freeness of His grace are as much for those of his chil- 
dren who are in the world now as they were for any 
who have lived in the past. Not only so, but they are as 
readily within our reach as they have ever been within 
the reach of saints, and by the same means. He is no- 
respecter of persons. These Ephesians seemed ripe for 
great experiences, yet did not have "a spirit of wisdom 
and revelation" such as they needed. 

And what was their condition without it? Was it 
not very much the condition of many Christians of the 
present day? They did not know what was the "hope 
of His calling/' nor "the riches of the glory of His in- 
heritance in the saints," nor the exceeding greatness of 
His power to usward who believe." They needed to be 
"strengthened with might." They were not able to 
comprehend the "love of Christ," and were not "filled 



Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation. 5 

with the Spirit." These were blessings they sorely 
needed, freely provided for them, and within their 
reach, of which they had no spiritual knowledge. 

JSTow if these Ephesians, who had received the Pente- 
costal gift of the Holy Ghost, were nevertheless thus in 
ignorance of the "hope of His calling/' need we be sur- 
prised to find the same want in the church to-day? 

And so it is. We find Christians, children of God 
by regeneration, who scarcely know "whether there be 
any Holy Ghost." They have no correct conception 
of "the hope of His calling." The eyes of their under- 
standing have not been enlightened, and they cannot 
see. Their love does not so "abound in all knowledge 
and in all judgment, that they may approve things 
that are excellent." They have love truly, but it lacks 
knowledge, and it does not abound. If they experi- 
mentally knew the excellence of these things, then they 
would approve them. 

It is a wonderful thing to be taught by the Spirit. 
He deals directly with consciousness, rather than with 
the mind or intellect. What he shows us we realize to 
be true. It is made part of our consciousness. We 
may not know how or why, but we know the fact. We 
attempt through the intellect to reach consciousness; to 
teach, in the sense of making others see and feel what we 
see. We may but partially succeed. We may make them 
see how things might be. We may make them see the 
probability of their truth. We may even make this prob- 
ability exceedingly strong. Yea, we may do more. We 
may make it so strong that the man cannot see how it 
can be otherwise, and yet, he may reject it, and not be 
wholly irrational in doing so. Why? Because it may 
involve so much to him that he, by the exercise of a 



6 The Hope of His Calling. 

background of judgment, says, as most of us have had 
to say, time and again, "So far as I can see, this is true. 
To my reason it seems plain, but a mistake would in- 
volve ruin, and why might I not at last be mistaken? 
I am very fallible. I have been mistaken in confident 
conclusions heretofore, not once, but often. I cannot 
therefore afford to step out in a matter of such moment 
on the bare support of reason. It is too great for me, 
and I will just pass it for the present." What is the 
matter? The man is dealing with things beyond him. 
Especially is this true in spiritual things. Eeason can- 
not grasp them. There must be a God-given conscious- 
ness of truth before it enters into our lives with power. 
The sinner could never apprehend mercy in Jesus if 
the Holy Ghost did not "convince." This is the nature 
of Spirit teaching. What he reveals and witnesses to 
becomes conscious knowledge with us, and so comes 
with transforming power into our lives. Hence the 
wonderful, immediate and permanent change that 
comes over the Spiritntaught man. We may have 
known a passage of scripture familiarly for years, but 
when the Spirit shines on our understanding and re- 
veals to us the application which the truth in it bears 
to our own individual life and interest, we find that, in 
fact, we never did know the text before. We never 
saw God's thought to us in it, and without seeing that, 
missed altogether its benefit to us. 

On a memorable occasion — memorable in his life — 
Webb-Peploe selected the familiar text, "My grace is 
sufficient for thee," on which to prepare a sermon. His 
heart was utterly broken at the time, under a terrible 
bereavement that had befallen him in the loss of a 
child under exceptionally painful circumstances, and 



Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation. 7 

while he studied this text, his broken heart cried in an 
agony, "Oh, Lord, it is not sufficient." Then falling he- 
fore Him in prayer, he plead that He would make it 
sufficient. Lifting his eyes, he saw as a motto on the 
wall, which had not before attracted his notice, this 
very verse with the "is" in large, colored letters, and 
instantly he felt in him the consciousness that it was 
in fact, and truth, sufficient for him, entering at once 
and permanently into a new conception of spiritual life, 
in which light fell upon scores of texts on the same 
line. What was the difference in this text now and 
before? It was just the same. To the intellect it 
meant the same thing all the time. The Spirit had 
not shown him its application to his own individual 
life, in all its fullness before. 

What an inestimable blessing, then, to have a "spirit 
of wisdom and revelation;" a spirit that takes the 
truth of the scriptures and shows where it touches us, 
so that we can boldly, and without fear, step out into 
better and higher experiences. 

Let us not, however, suppose that the gift of a "spirit 
of wisdom and revelation" will instantly flash upon the 
mind all truth important to us, so that we will imme- 
diately see in its fullness "what is the hope of His call- 
ing/" and the "exceeding greatness of His power to 
usward." We would be disappointed. That the mo- 
ment when this spirit of revelation is first bestowed as 
a distinct gift, or anointing, will be a crisis in our lives, 
a time when light and love and power come in upon 
us with a fullness and a joy never before known, I think 
to be almost certain. And yet, let us understand that 
it may be but the beginning of the spiritual, in contra- 
distinction to the carnal life with us. It is the gift 



8 The Hope of His Calling. 

by which we are now, rapidly and joyously, to move for- 
ward in the knowledge of God, and all that is involved 
in that. It will not dispense with the need of Bible 
study, but will make it thenceforward a rapture to us, 
unfolding most marvelously the mind of the Spirit in its 
application to ourselves and our needs. Then will we 
begin to see in truth, and comparative fullness, "what 
is the hope of His calling." As to what that hope in- 
volves I shall not undertake to discuss here. It is the 
subject of all I shall have to say, and cannot be ex- 
pressed in a paragraph. But we will in this blessing 
see, as certainly we have never seen before, something 
of what it is, 

Here is the important point to which we would at 
this moment direct attention: there is such a gift. It 
is for all. It is indispensable to rapid growth. It is to 
be sought after — to be prayed for. We are not prop- 
erly prepared to understand the Bible till we obtain it. 
If such an experience has not come into our lives, 
it is impossible for us to enter fully into the bless- 
ings mentioned in this prayer for the Ephesians. If 
they could have had these things without this gift, 
it would seem to have been idle to pray for it as a 
means by which they were to obtain them. Then let 
us at the outset of our study, earnestly ask the Father 
for "the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowl- 
edge of Him." 



JESUS' HUMAN PERSONALITY IN CONTRA- 
DISTINCTION TO HIS GODHEAD* 

There is, perhaps, no better thread-thought for what 
we shall have occasion to say in the following pages 
than the human personality in Christ, as a type of what 
the Christian may be. In tracing this analogy, there- 
fore, as the same is set forth in the scriptures, seems to 
me to be involved the most satisfactory exposition of 
my subject. 

It is impossible to understand the life of Jesus, or 
in any rational way to account for much that is said by 
Him, and of Him, without drawing a distinct and clearly 
defined line between His two natures. It is not enough 
to have in mind, in a general way, that He was both 
God and man. We should be able to distinguish be- 
tween these two natures, and see what in the scriptures* 
is said with reference to the one, and what to the other, 
and what has reference to both jointly. Just as it will, 
and must, lead to error and confusion, to take what 
is said of the two natures of the Christian without dis- 
tinguishing these natures, so must it also bewilder and 
confound the mind to take all that is said of Jesus with- 
out seeing what specific part of his nature is referred to. 
A recognition of these things is indispensable, there- 
fore, in order to rightly divide the word of truth. 

Then let us, as a beginning step, separate in our 
minds as clearly as possible these two natures of Christ. 
In doing this no appeal should be made to independent 
reason, or philosophy, as revelation only can give us such 

(9) 



io The Hope of His Calling. 

knowledge. And yet we are not left without sufficient 
information from which to draw many plain and help- 
ful conclusions. 

He was perfect God and perfect man. On his divine 
side he was just God Himself in the fullest sense of the 
word. He knew no limitations of any kind or char- 
acter, and could know no want. He was independent 
of all conditions, as no conditions could exist but by His 
sufferance. He was above involuntary suffering, and 
could not be tempted with evil. He needed not to 
make his wants known, and had no one to whom he 
could pray, being himself the author of all good. He 
followed His own supreme will, and could follow no 
other. With these facts firmly and clearly fixed in the 
mind, they will aid us in studying His humanity, for 
whatever appeared in His life or words, inconsistent 
with these certain truths, could not have involved His 
eternal and perfect Godhead. That such was His di- 
vine nature is expressly and repeatedly told us. Paul 
says, "God was in Christ/' 1 "God was manifest in the 
flesh/' 2 John says, "In the beginning was the Word, 
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." 3 
Isaiah says of Him, "His name shall be called Wonder- 
ful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, the Everlasting Fa- 
ther/' 4 These unqualified expressions involve the 
Godhead, but if any doubt remained on that point, 
Paul declares, "In him dwelleth all the fullness of the 
Godhead bodily." 5 

From these scriptures, then, and others, no doubt can 
exist that on His divine side He was in an absolute and 



*2 Cor. v. 19. ■! Tim. iii. 16. si j hn i. 1. *Isa. ix. 6, 
s Col. ii. 9. 



Jesus' Human Personality. m 

unqualified sense, the Almighty and Eternal God. But 
as such He could not have been confined to His human- 
ity. Before the first human being existed He was God. 
He himself as God created Adam. While His humanity 
was upon the earth He, as God, was filling and ruling* 
everywhere in the universe. 

I challenge attention to the fact that both Isaiah in 
his prophecy, and Jesus Himself by express declaration, 
say, that on His divine side He was the "Father." In the 
quotation from the former, He is called "The Everlast- 
ing Father;" and Jesus says, "He that hath seen me- 
hath seen the Father." 1 "I and my Father are one." 2 
And yet in his whole life and ministry as a man He rec- 
ognized the Father as the author of all His words and 
works, and the sole authority that sent Him into the 
world. Hence it would seem plain that He, in all He 
said of God, but spake of His own Godhead, and in all 
His recognitions of the Father, recognized only the di- 
vine side of His own being. Every appeal to God was 
an appeal from His human personality to His Godhead. 
Nothing could more clearly show His duplex nature 
as God and man, the personal existence of a hu- 
man and a divine nature in one body — the former dis- 
tinct from, dependent upon, and resigned to, the latter. 

As the creator of all things He was not man; as "The 
mighty God," "The Everlasting Father," He could not 
have been man. As the embodiment in all its full- 
ness of the Godhead, He was not man. This was God 
in man; "God in Christ;" "God manifest in the flesh." 

On the other hand, we find expressions concerning 
Him that would be inappropriate to God. Isaiah says of 



1 John xiv. 9. 2 John x. 30. 



12 The Hope of His Calling. 

Him, "Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, 
in whom My soul delighteth; I have put My Spirit upon 
Him; He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles." 1 
This could not have been spoken of His divinity. As 
"the mighty God," the everlasting Father," He could 
not need to be "elected," nor to be upheld, nor to be 
anointed with His own Spirit. Hence this can refer to 
nothing else than His pure humanity, for, bear in mind, 
that His two natures cannot be blended. The human 
was only human, and the divine was the eternal God- 
head Himself. This election, anointing, etc., was not 
the act of a distant God. It was the act of His own 
divinity towards His own humanity. 

On the same line, Jesus speaking of Himself as "the 
Son of man," says, "Him hath God the Father sealed." 2 
Here is a remarkable text. When we remember that 
the same term is used in reference to the souls of saints, 
we must, it would seem, see that it could have referred 
to nothing else than His humanity. There could be 
no occasion for Him to have been sealed as God. And 
who could have sealed Him? As to what this sealing 
was, there would seem to be no necessary doubt. We 
are to be "sealed" by the Holy Ghost. And just as we 
are anointed by Him, so we are told, "God anointed 
Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost." 3 Manifestly 
His human soul was sealed precisely as our own souls 
are sealed. And so we find Peter on the day of Pente- 
cost saying, "Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of 
God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, 
which God did by Him in the midst of you." 4 Cer- 
tainly this language is plain. It means that Jesus in 



1 Isa. xlii. 1. 2 John vi. 27. 3 Acts x. 38. * Acts ii. 22, 



Jesus' Human Personality. 13 

His human personality was a man, nothing more, noth- 
ing less — a man "anointed with, the Holy Ghost and 
with power," "for God was with Him." There was no 
more divinity inherent in His humanity than there was 
in that of Paul, or any other son of God by regeneration. 
As a man, He was in very fact and truth only man, 
while as God He was the embodiment of the Godhead. 

The same truth is further shown when Jesus says, "I 
seek not my own will." * That could not have been 
the language of His divinity. It could not have referred 
to His will as the "Everlasting Father," for we know 
that in His whole life He did seek the Father's will, 
and perfectly fulfilled it. Yet the speaker, the person- 
ality that uttered these words, had a will — a separate 
and distinct, personal will — a will in entire subordina- 
tion to another's will. "I came down from heaven not 
to do mine own will." 2 It was wholly the voice of His 
human personality, and shows the distinct existence in 
Him of a purely human will. "Not as I will, but as 
thou wilt." 3 The same thought is oft repeated by Him. 
There was a will that was not a part of His Godhead. 
It was a finite will, as truly and entirely human as 
yours or mine. He had not come to fulfill it. He was 
not to be guided by it in His ministry. He had wholly 
yielded it up to the Father's will. And who was the 
Father, but "The Everlasting Father," whom Isaiah 
says, He Himself was, and of whom He says, "I and my 
Father are one." What then? It was His human per- 
sonality yielding itself up to His own Godhead.. 

Again we find Him often, aud sometimes in unuttera- 
ble agony, praying to the Father. Though as God He 



1 John v. 30. 2 John vi. 38. 3 Matt. xxvi. 39. 



i4 .The Hope of His Causing. 

was the Father Himself, still He prayed to the Father. 
"He kneeled down and prayed, saying, Father, if thou 
be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not 
my will, but thine, be done." x Who was this praying? 
It was not the "mighty God," "the everlasting Father" 
praying to Himself, and there was none else to whom He 
could pray, for by Him did everything in heaven and 
earth exist. It would have been meaningless for Him 
thus in agony, in which He sweat, as it were great drops 
of blood, to have plead with His sole self. We cannot, 
of course, suppose that God is double-minded; that He 
has two wills, or any indecision of will, or that His di- 
vinity has ever in any sense or degree been "divided 
against itself," that He should find it necessary to be- 
seech Himself to remember and bless Himself. This 
was His humanity — pure humanity — nothing more. It 
was exactly like yours and mine, sin excepted. It was 
-as weak as ours. It suffered as ours. It was as de- 
pendent as ours. Let us see it. Jesus' Godhead was 
not speaking. It was the human personality, and that 
only. It was appealing not to one afar off, neither was 
it appealing with uncertainty. Neither did the fact 
of its weakness and dependence render its destiny un- 
certain. It was man possessed wholly and indissolubly 
•of God, and fully conscious of the indissolubility of 
this union. It was the man Christ Jesus, speaking to 
his own Godhead, from whose love it was impossible 
for Him to be separated. 

In accordance with this view we find that as a child 
He "grew and waxed strong in spirit." 2 Or, as Luke 
expresses it again, he "increased in wisdom and stature, 



1 Luke xxii. 41, 42. a Luke ii. 40. 



Jesus' Human Personality. 15 

and in favor with God and man." x Of course we 
see at once that it could not have been so said of His 
divinity. As God He never "waxed" strong, nor "in- 
creased in wisdom," for the reason that being om- 
nipotent and omniscient, there was never a time when 
he could have been stronger, or wiser, than He was. 
Being finite on His human side, however, like our- 
selves, he grew and developed. It is plain from these 
texts that he was not uniformly "strong in spirit" from 
His first consciousness. He "waxed strong," that is, 
increased in strength of spirit. It could have been 
nothing but His humanity. 

And it must also be plain that His two natures could 
not have been inter-blended. If His humanity had 
been partly divine and His divinity partly human, then 
His divinity would have been rendered finite. What- 
ever can "wax strong," increase in strength, must be 
finite. And so of all the texts we have noticed in 
regard to his humanity. They speak of finite being. 
It would be degrading to His Godhead to suppose that 
it is in any degree human. Besides He is said to be the 
"first born of every creature." 2 This would fix a be- 
ginning to so much of His Godhead, if it were any 
part of it. There was no interblending of natures. On 
the one side of His nature He was only man, on the 
other He was the uncreated, self-existent God. 

Must we not in our minds separate things that are 
thus distinct from each other in the scriptures, if we 
would rightly understand them? 

Jesus' nature both as man and God was in exact 
harmony. The difference was not one of nature, but 



1 Luke ii. 52. 2 Col. i. 16. 



1 6 Thk Hope of His Calling. 

one of endowments. His humanity was willingly and 
literally yielded up to, hidden in, possessed of His 
divinity, so that there was not in fact two outward lives 
lived hy Him, but one, and that life was essentially and 
entirely divine. His humanity does not anywhere, or 
in any degree, appear in it in contradistinction to His 
divinity. It is shown not in His relations to the world, 
or Satan, but in His relations to His own Godhead. 
If he had appeared on earth as God only, and in the 
form of God; and had lived the same outward life 
He did live, it would have been no more truly divine 
than it was. The fact of His humanity was not suf- 
fered to, in any degree, render Him imperfect as a 
teacher, or performer of God's wondrous works, or in 
the perfect holiness and righteousness of His life. In 
all this the Father lived. He was manifesting, not the 
best human life, not what the most perfect man might 
of himself be, and do, but He was Himself Christ's 
life. He was in Him manifesting Himself. So that 
while on His human side He was only a man, and 
nothing more, on His divine side He was as truly the 
omnipotent God. His humanity, possessed absolutely 
by His divinity, being but a willing, rational, yielded 
medium, through which this immaculate divinity should 
be shown to the world. 

So we see, I hope,, that to recognize the distinct 
humanity of Jesus, as a separate personality, and its 
entire helplessness, and dependence, does not detract 
from the pure and sole divinity of His life, every mani- 
festation in it being at the instance of God's will, and 
through His power, and to His glory. 

"With this starting point th«n, that the divinity of 
Jesus was distinct in personality from His humanity, 



Jesus' Human Personality. 17 

and not confined to it, nor blended with it; and in- 
versely that His humanity was also complete within 
itself, and existed as a distinct personality, I think we 
are prepared to see things in the scriptures that would 
otherwise be obscure — things that are greatly to our 
comfort and encouragement as sons with Him of a 
common Father, and joint-heirs with Him of a common 
heritage. 
2 



THE "NEW MAN" IN US, CREATED IN THE 

"IMAGE" OF THE HUMAN SOUL 

OF JESUS. 

Having studied the scriptures with reference to the 
fact of a separate human personality in Jesus, distinct 
from His God-head, let us now consider somewhat, the 
individual characteristics of His human personality, and 
incidentally the analogy between it and our own hu- 
manity. 

Bear in mind that I speak always with sole reference 
either to His human personality, or else of His God- 
head, and not of both indiscriminately, and that when 
I speak of His human personality, I do so with the 
expectation that what is said will be received as in con- 
nection with, and qualified, and explained by, what is 
said in other parts of the discussion in reference to 
the same subject. When I say things that could not, 
without irreverence, and detraction, be said of his 
divinity, just as He Himself, and the apostles, have 
done, I am not speaking of His divinity. I say this 
at this point to prevent such possible misunderstanding, 
and hence misrepresentation of my views as might arise 
from isolated sentences taken independently of, and un- 
explained by, the general context, by which I might 
be made to say the exact opposite of what I, in fact, 
believe and teach; for I am sure that it would be as 
improper to use language such as we find used in the 
Bible in reference to His humanity, as referring to His 
Godhead, as it would be to apply language used in 
(18) 



The " New Man ' ' in Us. i 9 

it of Paul, to God Himself. Let things stand in their 
true connection, and he considered in the light in which 
they are spoken. I am in an especial sense, and chiefly, 
looking at His humanity, and will, it may he, speak 
with exclusive reference to it, at times, though I may 
use general terms, and always so, no matter in what 
terms, when I say things that would he derogatory to 
His Godhead. 

And now we come to consider the analogy in point 
of nature that exists between His human personality 
and our own. We must not forget that this likeness, 
exists only between His human personality, and the 
Christian, as it involves not only His body, but His. 
human soul as well, and in a most especial sense, 
it being the seat of reason, of the emotions, and of the 
will. The body is a tabernacle only, or house in which 
this rational and accountable soul dwells. It is the soul, 
supremely, that is lost or saved. Jesus says, "What is 
a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and 
lose his own soul ?" x Speaking of the rich fool He says, 
"This night thy soul shall be required of thee." 2 We 
are to "believe to the saving of the soul/' 3 Christians 
are admonished to "commit the keeping of their souls 
to Him." 4 John saw the "souls" of departed saints. 5 
So while the body truly is included in redemption, and 
its resurrection is one of the ground doctrines of our 
most holy faith, and while the likeness holds in this 
respect also, as we shall more fully see hereafter, still, 
it is in respect to the soul only that we are in this 
life to be "conformed" to His image. So far as the life 



1 Matt. xvi. 26. 3 Luke xii. 20. 3 Heb. x. 39. * 1 Pet. iv. 19. 
sEev. vi. 9. 



20 The Hope of His Caujng. 

that now is is concerned, the wonderful changes wrought 
in us by the grace and power of God do not affect the 
flesh. It remains a "natural body" till resurrection 
power comes in contact with it. 1 Not so, however, with 
the rational soul. The change that conforms it to the 
human soul of Jesus, is a change that is, and must be, 
experienced here, in this life, and will in no sense or 
degree be accomplished after death. 

Therefore let it be borne in mind that the likeness 
of our humanity to the humanity of Jesus, has refer- 
ence not to the old unregenerate man, or soul, with 
which we are born, but to the "new man." The "old 
man" is not like Him, and cannot be. It is of the 
devil and has a devilish nature. "Ye are of your 
father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will 
do." 2 Why? Because the child partakes of the nature 
•of the parent. If they are children of the devil, they 
will 'in nature be like the devil. They will love the 
things that he loves, and hate the things that he hates. 
They will do his deeds. Hence there is no possible 
likeness in moral nature between the natural unregen- 
erate soul, and the human soul of Jesus Christ. It is a 
fallen, perverted, corrupted, disfigured soul. It is not 
a son of God, but of Satan, and so there can be no 
likeness of moral nature, and the scriptures do not teach 
.such a likeness. 

It is the "new man" that is to be like Jesus' human 
•soul. We are told that God did predestinate that those 
foreknown by Him, who should be heirs of salvation, 
should be conformed to the image of Jesus. "Whom 
he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to oe con- 



^Cpr. xv. 44. 2 John viii. 44. 



The "New Man" in Us. 21 

formed to the image of his Son, that he might be the 
first born among many brethren." x There is an im- 
portant, and a divine change that must take place in 
the soul, before we can be "conformed" to His "image," 
and this change is wrought in regeneration, the new 
birth, the creation of the "new man." 

It is very plain that the likeness to Christ here spoken 
of, is not a likeness that comes by natural generation, 
or fleshly birth, but is a "created" likeness — a likeness 
involving a great change of moral being, which is 
wrought in us. Neither is it a change in the nature 
of the flesh, or body. It is a change of the soul, the 
putting off of the "old man" which is the natural un- 
regenerate soul, and the putting on of the "new man." 
As is plainly said at another place, "Ye have put off 
the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new 
man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image 
of him that created him." 2 We know that this cannot 
refer to the flesh, for it is unchanged. It continues 
to lust against the Spirit of God. It remains contrary 
to the law of God, and cannot be subject to it. It must, 
therefore, be the soul. And hence we hear Paul saying, 
"I delight in the law of God after the inward man." 3 
And again, "with the mind I myself serve the law of 
God, but with the flesh the law of sin." 4 

There is a likeness between our bodies truly, as we 
have said. But the point to which we desire to direct 
attention here is, that Christ in truth had a created 
human soul — a soul that was born of God, in its original 
creation, and that He was therefore, in this aspect of 
His nature, in a peculiar spiritual sense, a son of God, 



Rom. viii. 29. 2 Col. iii. 9, 10. 3 Rom. vii. 22. * Rom. vii. 25. 



22 The Hope of His Calling. 

aside from the fact of His divine personality, or God- 
head, in which sense He was truly, and really as we 
have seen, the uncreated, self-existent, eternal God Him- 
self. I want us to see that in His humanity He was, 
so far as the soul is concerned, a son of God, in a sense 
similar to that in which we become sons of God by 
regeneration. We are prone to consider Him the son 
of God only in the sense of being God Himself. But 
what about His human soul? If our human souls are 
born of God thereby becoming "the new man . . , 
created in righteousness and true holiness/' 1 and so 
we become by this new birth, literally and in fact, 
spiritual sons of God, was not His human soul which 
was also born of God as truly, a son of God, in the 
same sense, and for the same reason? 2 The "new 
man" in us, is an exact "image" of the human soul in 
Him, and doubtless for the reason that both are alike 
born of God. 

That He had a distinct human soul there can be no 

4 

question. He had a separate human will as we have 
elsewhere seen, which belongs exclusively to the soul. 
And in His agony in the garden, we hear Him saying, 
"My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death." Was 
this soul part of His Godhead? Can we suppose this 
anguish was suffered by God the Father, whom He was 
on His divine side, and to whom He was praying for 
deliverance if possible from it? Why should God in 
such an agony have prayed to Himself? Nay, this was 
but His human soul. Again we are told, He was tempt- 
ed in all points like as • we are. What is it that is 
tempted in us but the soul ? And what could there have 



Eph. iv. 24. 2 Col. i. 16. 



The " New Man " in Us. 23 

"been in His humanity to be tempted but the soul? 
"God cannot be tempted with evil." His divinity, 
therefore, was above temptation. Yet He was sorely 
tempted, "He himself hath suffered, being tempted." 1 
It was His human soul. Again we read, "Thou wilt 
not leave My soul in hell." 2 "His soul was not left in 
hell." 3 Was God, the mighty Father, in the grave? 
Could He who raised Jesus from the grave have been 
Himself confined to it? 

There can be no doubt that He had a distinct, com- 
plete, wholly human soul. And if He had how are we 
to view it? What were its endowments, and whence 
did it come? Was it a created soul, and if so when? 
It certainly did not come into the world with the nature 
of other human souls. It was not conceived in sin and 
brought forth in iniquity as ours are. While yet un- 
born He was called that "holy thing." It could not 
therefore have decended by natural generation from 
Adam. His soul was a spiritual son of God by creation. 
It was never in a fallen state, and hence never needed 
to be born again. It was by creation what other human 
souls become by regeneration. It was as the "new 
man" in us. 

We were predestinated to be conformed to the same 
image, that He might be the "first born among many 
brethren." Can this refer to our common origin with 
Him, from the womb — to fleshly birth? Why should 
we be "changed," or "conformed" to Him in this respect 
in order to become His brethren, when He, as matter 
of fact, in order to be a brother to us in this respect, 
took on Himself of the same flesh that we are of — 



1 Heb. ii. 18. 2 Acts ii. 27. 3 Acts ii. 31. 



24 The Hope of His Calung. 

was "conformed" to us — as we are told in Hebrews, "As 
the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also 
Himself likewise took part of the same/' * In this sense 
also, He was a brother not to the saved only, but to the 
whole race. 

Neither was He in this sense the "first born among 
many brethren." Millions had in like manner been 
born into the world before His advent. But there was 
a sense in which He was to become "the first born 
among many brethren," and to this end God predestined 
that foreknown ones should be conformed to His 
"image." He had an "image," therefore, to which the 
first saved soul was to be "conformed" — an "image" — 
and therefore an existence, before any soul was saved. 
He was then to be the first born of a new type, or 
order, of human being. He was to have brethren, Him- 
self being the elder brother. That is, others were to 
be brought into existence exactly like Himself. And 
so God predestinated that foreknown ones should be 
"conformed to His image." He is not conforming Him 
to them. It is not the putting on of the flesh by Him. 
It is the creation of a spiritual man in them, the "new 
man" — the "conformation" of their souls, by the new 
birth, to His perfect human soul. As His human soul 
did not descend with ours from Adam, and hence had 
not a common parentage in this sense, but was before 
Adam's creation born or created of God becoming the 
"first born of every creature," 2 it was needful that those 
who were to be His brethren in truth, His brethren 
in a high, real, spiritual sense, His brethren in the 
possession of a righteous and holy nature like his own, 



x Heb. ii. 14. 2 Col. i. 16. 



The "New Man" in Us. 25 

His brethren by common parentage, should be born 
of God in fact, become like Himself in a very literaL 
sense his children, spiritual sons by spiritual genera- 
tion. Hence when He came to make the "new man," 
the brother in fact — "conformed to his image" — we are 
told he was "renewed in knowledge after the image of 
him that created him;" x he was created in righteous- 
ness and true holiness," 2 he was "born, not of 
blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will 
of man, but of God." 3 

And if born^of God, then is he really and truly a spir- 
itual son of God, and so far as we can see, for the same 
reason, and in the same sense that Jesus in his human 
soul was a son of God. And so is he called. "Now 
are we the sons of God." 4 "Heirs of God, and joint- 
heirs with Christ." 5 This is undoubtedly the "new 
man/" "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit," 6 
but the body remains flesh. It is the soul, the "inward," 
the "new man" only. That Jesus was in His human 
soul a son of God, is shown in His own words, "Verily, 
verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of him- 
self." 7 Of course in this general term, "the Son," he 
refers to Himself as the Son of God. And yet it must, 
it would seem, have referred to His human soul. Such 
language could not be used of the Godhead. In His 
flesh He was the Son of man, in His soul He was a 
Son of God. This human soul, while perfect in nature 
and truly a son of God, was precisely like our own 
renewed souls. It was a created, finite soul. 

He was to be the first born, the first human soul 



T CoL iii. 10. 2 Eph. iv. 24. 3 John i. 13. *1 John iii. 2* 
s Rom. viii. 17. 6 John iii. 6. 7 John v. 19. 



26 The Hope of His Calling. 

born of God in this sense, the first possessed of -such 
endowments. When was this human soul of Jesus born, 
or created? He was as "The Lamb slain from the foun- 
dation of the world." 1 He was the first born of that 
type of being that His soul represents, "the first born 
among many brethren/' 2 "the first born of every 
-creature." 8 Of course as the uncreated, self-existent 
God He was never born or created at all. Yet He is 
said to have been born or created. When was this? 
It was not when He was born of the Virgin Mary. 
Millions had of course been born before that. He could 
not then, have been the first born of "every creature." 
So He seems to have had another birth or creation. 
Before the world was, He, as man, was, it seems, made. 
Can we suppose these scriptures to refer to His divinity? 
Nay, verily. That would be to impeach His Godhead. 
As "the everlasting Father," the "fullness of the God- 
head" He could have had no beginning. Neither could 
it refer to his body, as we must plainly see. It must 
therefore refer to His human soul. 

And this harmonizes with the scriptures in general. 
He is declared to have been in existence as a Savior 
before the fall of Adam, before the foundation of the 
world. Our calling and grace, "was given us in Christ 
Jesus before the world began, but is now made mani- 
fest." 4 He knew Abraham. When the Hebrew chil- 
dren were in the fiery furnace, there was one in their 
midst "like the Son of God." 5 He was that Spiritual 
Eock that followed the children of Israel, 6 and of which 
they drank in their wilderness wanderings. We are 



1 Rev. xiii. 8. 2 Koin. viii. 29. 3 Col. i. 16. *2 Tim. i. 9, 10. 
s Dan. hi. 25. 6 1 Cor. x. 4. 



The " New Man " in Us. 27 

also told that they tempted "Christ." 1 Peter speaks of 
"the spirit of Christ" in the prophets, 2 in whom He 
fore-told His own advent in the flesh. He therefore 
as a distinct personality in the Godhead has existed 
since before the world began. 

Then again we are told by Himself, that He was 
with the Father before the world was. 3 That He "came 
forth from the Father." 4 Again He says, "I came down 
from heaven not to do mine own will, but the will of 
Him that sent me," 5 from which it appears that while 
with the Father in heaven, before He was sent, He had 
a personal, human will — for if He had any will distinct 
from that of the Father, it must have been a human 
will in the sense in which we have been speaking, as 
■on His divine side He was the Father Himself, as we 
have elsewhere seen, and the Father cannot be sup- 
posed to have two wills. Again we are expressly told, 
"The second man is the Lord from heaven." 6 It was 
His spirit in the prophets — "the Spirit of Christ" 7 — 
and hence He was in this sense, as a man — in the 
spiritual part of His human nature — His soul — in ex- 
istence before He took on Him a body. So we hear 
Him in prophecy saying, "A body hast thou prepared 
me," 8 showing that as a man He existed first without 
a body. How else could it be? "A body hast thou 
prepared me." Is this the Father addressing Himself? 
Certainly not. It is the Son addressing the Father. 
God prepared Him a body, and He looked forward to, 
and Himself in the prophets, foretold His own advent 
in it. 



1 1 Cor. x. 9. 2 1 Pet. i. 11. 3 John xvii. 5. 4 John xvi. 28. 
s John vi. 38. 6 1 Cor. xv. 40. i 1 p e t. i. 11. 8 Heb. x. 5. 



28 The Hope of His Causing. 

Now if it be true that He as a spiritual man, as well 
as God, existed before the world was, it greatly sim- 
plifies many passages of scripture. We may then readily 
see how He could have been truly the "first born of 
every creature," "the first born among many brethren." 
It also makes plain how He, as the perfect Savior — ■ 
the God-man, the Christ, could have been all along the 
ages literally with His people, and in them. 

I am not at all sure that we comprehend even re- 
motely what it means in ourselves to be "sons of God," 
to be in truth, spiritually "bom of God." Our spiritual 
life is in this earthen vessel now. It is in a "body of 
death." We are temporarily deformed. It doth not 
yet appear, therefore, what we shall be, but when He 
shall appear we shall be "like Him." There is doubt- 
less a change takes place in our being at regenera- 
tion beyond what we have generally supposed. In. 
heaven we are to be like the glorified humanity of 
Christ. We know not what it means. We are to judge 
angels. To sit upon spiritual thrones. We do not know 
therefore what were the powers of Jesus' human soul, 
existing as a spirit without the encumbrance of a fleshly 
body. It represented a new order of being. If we are 
to be "conformed" to Him, if the first saved soul was 
to be "conformed" to Him, then He as the pattern, He 
as the "first born," must have been in existence before. 
And so we now enter into brotherhood with Him — true 
Spiritual brotherhood, not by a fleshly birth, ;but by a 
wondrous change of soul, by a divine birth, in which 
it becomes "a new creature/' a "new man" "created 
in righteousness and true holiness," being renewed in 
knowledge "after the image of Him that created him,"' 
in which we are in truth and fact, "conformed to the^ 
image of His Son." 



THE ENDOWMENTS OF JESUS' HUMANITY, 
COMPARED WITH OUR OWN. 

Having now considered the likeness in point of 
nature between Jesus' humanity and our own as Chris- 
tians, we come to consider next, how this analogy exists 
also in point of endowments. 

We have His perfect life set before us as the example 
and pattern after which our own should be lived. We 
are told that we should "walk even as He walked" x 
"follow His steps/' 2 And yet many there are who 
cannot just see that the fact of His having lived such 
a life, has any necessary connection with our ability to 
live it. They make no clear discrimination between 
His human and divine personal ity, and do not, therefore, 
find in His life the inspiration and encouragement to 
hope, that they would see in it, if it were looked upon 
by them, as the life of a mere man. We invest His 
humanity with a degree of divinity, and His divinity 
with humanity. We blend and confound His natures, 
and view Him in a general way as God-man, so that it 
is impossible to clearly define what belongs to the one 
nature, and what to the other. We say, therefore, in- 
voluntarily, for a God-man to be able to live such a 
life as He lived, is one thing, and for a mere man 
to do so is another and different thing. Human biog- 
raphy is, indeed, of all history most inspiring and profit- 
able, for the reason, that what man has done, may 



1 1 John ii. 6. 2 1 Pet. ii. 21. 
(29) 



30 The Hope of His Calling. 

under like conditions be done by man again. It fur- 
nishes a living demonstration that it lies within the 
limits of possible attainment, and so we are inspired 
with hope and confidence in trying to compass the 
same ends in our own lives. Now it is in this sense 
precisely that the life of Jesus is most wisely and profit- 
ably to be studied. We are commanded to "walk even 
as He walked" because He was as literally as ourselves, 
a man, and through the same source of strength that 
He walked, we may in truth and fact "follow His steps." 
If we do not see this, we must of necessity lose the 
inspiration to hope and trust, and spiritual aspiration, 
that it is intended, and calculated to inspire in us. 
When we realize that we are commanded to "walk in 
the foot-steps" of a man — a man just as we are — as 
weak as we are, as incapable of self -guidance, or self- 
preservation, as wholly incapable of standing before the 
foes of holiness, then will we be compelled to see that 
there is some way by which such a life may be lived 
by us. Then will we begin in earnest to inquire how 
this perfect life was lived by a man, the source and 
the power of it, and if we find the same spiritual re- 
sources, quite as freely and certainly pledged to us, 
we will be driven to feel as we have never felt before, 
a sense of responsibility for the use of these resources, 
and a consciousness of personal guilt in failing "to walk 
even as He walked." And such is in fact the teaching 
of the word, concerning our obligations, and the pos- 
sibility of their fulfillment. Let us know assuredly, that 
we have not been commanded to undertake an impos- 
sible thing, when we are told "to walk even as He 
walked." 

And now we come to a direct study of this analogy as 



Endowments of Jesus' Humanity. 31 

it is revealed in the scriptures, believing that to see it is 
in a large measure to see "the hope of His calling/' 
which is in truth to be like Him. . 

That we can of ourselves do nothing in the great 
moral and spiritual conflict that is being waged in the 
world between God and Satan, both revelation and ex- 
perience unite in teaching. Truly did Jesus say, "with- 
out me ye can do nothing."* 1 And yet, while we have 
not a word in revelation, or a period of triumph in life, 
to encourage us to hope that we can, or ever will be 
able, through self, to successfully resist the wiles of the 
devil, still we persist in trying. In these awful and re- 
peated failures the heart grows sick and faint, and we 
come to distrust the very possibility of a holy life. 
That is the precise trouble with us. We try to "follow 
His steps," but do we try to do it in the same way 
and by the same power, that He walked? He led a 
wholly trust life — lived a given life, walking by the 
power of God, and now because we cannot by human 
strength live the same life, shall we conclude that it is 
an impossible life to us? Let us not do so. 

He was in His human personality, as we have said, 
and will now try to show, every whit as helpless as we 
are. He was no more capable of living the life He did 
live. Yet He, in fact, knew no sin, neither was guile 
found in His mouth. 

Do you say, was he in very truth as weak as we? Let 
us see. How weak are we? Once He said of us, "with- 
out me ye can do nothing." * That is the record as to 
our frailty. It is complete to be sure, but what does He 
say of Himself? Three times, and in most emphatic 

x 1 John xv. 5. 



32 Thk Hope) of His Calling. 

language He declares the same of His dependence on 
the Father. "I do nothing of myself." 1 "I can of 
mine own self do nothing." 2 "Verily, verily, I say 
unto you, the Son can do nothing of Himself." 3 

Such language can refer only to His humanity. It 
could not be spoken of Him as "the mighty God/' "The 
everlasting Father." But what does it teach? Un- 
doubtedly that He had a personality, which He, speak- 
ing as a man, designates by the pronoun "I," and also 
as "the Son," which was as helpless as any human 
personality in Christ that has ever existed, or can exist. 
He does not say, "I cannot of myself do all the works 
ye see me doing. I do not of myself have all the 
wisdom with which I speak unto you. I cannot always 
vanquish Satan." No. He says nothing like that. He 
.says with the utmost possible emphasis, "Verily, verily, 
I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of Himself." 
What more could be said of the helplessness of any 
son of God by regeneration? Was Paul, as a son of 
God, any weaker than that? Nay, verily. He was 
just that weak exactly. Without Christ he could do 
nothing. That was all. 

But Jesus does not stop with these general declara- 
tions emphatic and comprehensive as they are. He 
goes on to declare that He cannot even "live" of Him- 
self, saying, "I live by the Father." 4 Does He refer 
to temporal life? Certainly not. He is speaking to His 
disciples, and coupled with this reference to Himself, 
says they are in the same way to live by Him. "So, 
he that eateth me, even he shall live by me." 5 It could 



1 John viii. 28. 2 John v. 30. 3 John v. 19. 4 John vi. 57. 
5 John vi. 57. 



Endowments of Jesus' Humanity. 33 

not have referred to temporal life in them. They had 
that before they trusted in Him, and others, who did 
not trust in Him, had it equally with them. It referred 
to spiritual life' — the life eternal that the Father had 
given in Him, of which John says, "This is the record, 
that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life 
was in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and 
he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." * And 
of which Jesus said, "whosoever liveth and believeth 
in Me shall never die." 2 What He says of us then, 
He says in substance of Himself. In each case He 
speaks of abstract spiritual life. He was not living, 
indeed by one afar off. It was His humanity, living 
by His own Godhead. The life was in Him — in union 
with Him. 

Neither does He teach that we are to live by one afar 
off, but as truly by one who abides in us, and in the 
same sense that the Father became life to Himself, as 
a man, becomes our spiritual life also. Hence do we 
hear Paul saying, "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth 
in me." 3 As God the Father was in Jesus, manifest- 
ing to the world His own life, living in Him, showing 
Himself openly to men through Him, so He as God 
the Son, lives in us, becomes our spiritual life, so that 
in the same sense He lost His human life in the life 
of the Father in Him, we should lose our lives in the 
life of the Son in us. He lived by the Father as a 
man, because He could live in no other way. As a 
man He had no more spiritual life in Himself in- 
dependently of the Father than we have in ourselves 
independently of Him. 



1 1 John v. 11 , 12. 2 John xi. 26. » Gal. ii. 20. 
3 



34 Thk Hope of His Calling. 

When will we learn that Christ is literally to be 
all in all with us; that our lives are to be wholly 
lost in Him; that we are called to' a given life in 
Christ — not a life in imitation of Christ but a life from 
Christ, a life by Christ, a life in which Christ lives in 
us, and not we ourselves? How hard it is for us just 
to see the whole truth that eternal life, the life Christ 
brought, is not something separate from himself, that 
can be imparted and left to exist by inherent potency, 
but is in all its entirety, a life that remains in Christ, 
being continuously imparted to us, a literal "gift of 
God," 1 not in its beginning only, but in all its endless 
progress as well. "Christ, our life/' 2 

The next point we would call attention to is, that 
He as a man was in all points subject to temptation 
just as we are, and yet was sustained free from sin. 

We are prone to feel when we read of His temptations 
on the mount, that Satan was not holding the king- 
doms of the world and the glory of them before a mere 
man. And yet it must have been literally so, for God 
cannot be tempted of evil. If Satan had succeeded in 
overcoming Him, it would have been His humanity 
only that would have fallen. It could not have in- 
volved His Godhead, for as the everlasting Father, He 
was already at the head of universal dominion, and 
could not have been tempted, or overcome of Satan. 
But we are not left to inference on this subject. The 
scriptures show that Satan was addressing himself to 
His humanity, and to that only. He says, "If thou be 
the Son of God, command that these stones be made 
bread." 3 In His answer Jesus said, "It is written, man 



1 Eom. vi. 23. 2 Col. iii. 4. 3 Matt. iv. 3. 



Endowments of Jesus' Humanity. 35 

shall not live by "bread alone." x This shows two things: 
that He was addressed as "man/' and that in some 
sense as man, He was also the Son of God. Again when 
Satan had set Him on the pinnacle of the temple he 
quoted the scripture, "He shall give His angels charge 
concerning thee," etc. 2 Who could he have referred 
to as having given this charge but God the Father, and 
who could the angels have been given charge of but 
one who was weaker than themselves' — the "man" Jesus, 
"Who was made a little lower than the angels?" 3 So 
we see he was distinguishing between His human and 
His divine personality, and was addressing himself not 
to His Godhead but to His humanity only. With what 
increased wonder we view the Savior in this critical 
moment, when we see Him as a man, not left to Him- 
self truly, and yet on the side of His nature assailed 
-by Satan, distinctively a man. Nor can we suppose that 
He did not feel the force of temptation. Paul says of 
Him, "In all things it behooved Him to be made like 
unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and 
faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make 
reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that 
He Himself hath suffered, being tempted, He is able 
to succor them that are tempted." 4 And again, "We 
have not an high priest that cannot be touched with 
the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points 
tempted like as we are, yet without sin." 5 

He as a man had every infirmity that flesh is heir to. 
Otherwise He could not have been touched with a "feel- 
ing" of our "infirmities." He was "in all points" made 



1 Matt. iv.4. 2 Matt. iv. 6. 3Heb. ii. 9. <Heb. ii. 17, 18. 
sHeb. iv. 15. 



36 The Hope of His Calling. 

like unto us. Now, if He felt every temptation in all 
its power, that can beset a man in living a holy life; 
and yet, being a man, was wholly sustained, so that 
He did no sin, why may He not now both as God 
and man, representing our humanity on the one side, 
and the mighty God, that always sustained Him, as 
a man, in like temptations on the other, deliver us 
wholly in times of trial? Why should He not be able 
to succor them that are tempted seeing that He knows 
exactly, and from experience, the extent of the tempta- 
tion, the helplessness of humanity to resist it, and pos- 
sesses in His own Godhead the power that has once 
perfectly sustained Him as a man, in like temptations? 
And so He can and does, as it is said, "The Lord 
knoweth how to deliver the godly out of tempta- 
tions." * "God is faithful, who will not suffer you to 
be tempted above that ye are able." 2 

Following the analogy further let us consider that 
the human life of Jesus was not only a powerless 
life, subject to temptations like our own, but that it 
was as truly, as ours must be "kept" of the Father. "I 
the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold 
thine hand, and will keep thee, and will give thee for 
a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles," 3 
This again can refer to nothing else than His humanity. 
His divinity could have needed no help> as on that side 
of His life He was Himself the keeper and upholder 
of all things. It was His human soul, supported and 
kept by His own Godhead. 

And if in His human personality, the Son created 
In holiness, was thus helpless, why may not we also, 



*2Pet. ii. 9. 2 1 Cor. x. 13. 3lsa. xlii. 6. 



Endowments of Jesus' Humanity. 37 

who are no more human, and no more helpless, and. 
who are born of the same God and Father, sons in the 
same spiritual sense, be kept by the same power that 
held His hand, and kept His life, so that we may, as 
we are commanded to do, "walk even as He walked?" 
And especially so, since the same help is as plainly 
promised to us. "Fear thou not; for I am with thee: 
be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen 
thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee 
with the right hand of My righteousness." x And again, 
"He shall be holden up; for God is able to make 
him stand." 2 "Who are kept by the power of 
God." 3 

Just as the "power of God" was the support of His 
human life, and kept Him, so it is definitely promised, 
and pledged to us also. And yet, how very weak we 
are. How we fail and fall short of the glory of God. 
Can it be possible, that the "power of God" thus 
pledged to our support, is unable to do more for us 
than to keep our souls in a state of ineffectual protest 
against sin — alive — but full of doubt and weakness and 
trouble? Can we, in truth, be no better than we are 
notwithstanding such pledge of help ? Ay, surely, surely 
we can be. Exactly the same help, pledged to Jesus' 
human personality, was by Him as a man found to be 
all sufficient in living a life of holiness. Sin had no 
dominion over Him, and yet, His life was no less a 
given life than ours must be. Ay, that is the trouble. 
It is given, and can be lived only when accepted by 
faith, as a gift, and we do not take it. He was as 
incapable of self-preservation as we are, but that fact 



x Isa. xli. 10. 2 Rom. xiv. 4. s 1 p e t. i. 5. 



38 The Hope of His Calling. 

cuts no figure in His life, for the reason that He does 
not undertake to preserve Himself. He accepted the 
life that was given Him of the Father, and walked in 
it by Him, and therefore walked in safety and triumph. 
And so, also, must we do if ever we become truly spir- 
itual. 



TWO SANCTMCATIONS IN THE HUMAN 
LIFE OF JESUS- 

The scriptures set forth two sanctifications in the 
divine life of the saint, essentially different from each 
other, both in their intrinsic nature, and in the way 
in which they are bestowed. The one is a sanctification 
of the moral nature only, by which the being sanctified 
becomes a holy thing in the sense that the human 
soul of Jesus was holy in nature. The other has refer- 
ence to the outward conscious life, or "walk," in which 
this holy nature manifests itself openly. The instant 
the human soul of Jesus was born, or created, it was 
holy. This holiness was in no sense the result of 
works, or walk, as at that time He had done nothing. 
It was created in holiness of nature. 

Being, however, once created in holiness of nature 
and in possession of wonderful endowments of mind 
and emotion, and the consciousness of control over His 
own faculties, and hence of the power of self-assertion, 
He became conscious also of individuality and respons- 
ibility. He now enters upon a new character of life — 
His own conscious individual life, in which He, in his 
relations to outside things is to manifest openly the 
given holy nature of the soul. It was with this con- 
sciousness that, He "through the eternal Spirit offered 
Himself without spot to God," * saying, "Lo, I come 
to do thy will, God." 2 He thus as matter of de- 



*Heb. ix. 14. 2 Heb. x. 9. 
(39) 



40 The Hope of His Calling. 

liberate volition, consciously and rationally, gave "Him- 
self for us." 1 He presented Himself "a living sacrifice" 
to God. At the time He did so, He was without "spot" 
— He who "knew no sin," 2 consenting to become "sin" 
for us. 3 The Father accepted the holy offering, and 
"sanctified, and sent" Him "into the world." 4 "God 
was in Christ" 5 therefore, as a rational, yielded, human 
instrumentality, manifesting Himself unto the world. 6 
By the free and voluntary choice of the holy and right- 
eous nature given in the creation of His human soul, 
He consecrated Himself to be set apart to God's service 
in this especial and transcendent enterprise, and is 
of God the Father, "sanctified, and sent into the world." 7 
He came then not to live the life of a man, but to live 
an entirely divine or sanctified life. This sanctification 
has reference to his "walk," or outward conscious life. 
It does not, and cannot, refer to His nature which was 
without "spot" when offered, and could have needed 
no change. It was open, outward, manifested life, or 
"walk." Fie was in His earthly mission to be yielded 
up to, and wholly possessed of, the Holy Ghost. He 
was, as the voluntary choice of His own will, literally 
and entirely to lose His own life as a man. If He had 
not first had a. holy and sanctified nature He would not 
have made such a choice. But this original sanctifica- 
tion of nature was not enough, perfect and complete 
as it was. He needed and must have another sancti- 
fication. Holiness of nature did not involve power. It 
was in a finite soul, for of course it must have been 
His human soul that was "born" as we have elsewhere 



T Eph. v. 2. 2 2 Cor. v. 21. ^2 Cor. v. 21. 'John x. 36. 
5 2 Cor. v. 19. 6 1 Tim. iii. 16. ? John x. 36. 



Two Sanctifications. 41 

seen, and it must have been this sanctified human soul 
that consecrated itself, as God the Father needed not 
to consecrate Himself to Himself. Hence it was, "the 
Son could of Himself do nothing." He was perfect in 
nature, but finite in power, and the mission on whicli 
He was coming was beyond Him as a man. If His out- 
ward life or "walk" in the world was to be sanctified 
therefore, it must be by the power of His Godhead. For 
this He could as a man only yield Himself and trust. 
And so it is with the saint exactly. Sanetification 
of the moral nature of the abstract spiritual life given 
us in Christ Jesus, is a part of that life itself. It is 
"created in righteousness and true holiness." x This 
given nature does not, however, involve power to mani- 
fest itself in outward "walk." It has no necessary con- 
nection with power. It is not in any sense dependent 
upon works > and as it finds itself environed, can of 
itself actually do no good works. It involves the nature 
and nothing more. Jesus was as holy as a man, in this 
sense, when He lay helpless in the manger, as He was 
when on entering in triumph on His active public min- 
istry, in the power of the Holy Ghost, the Father said, 
"This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." 
Yet He had at that time done nothing, and could have 
done nothing in the flesh. Nothing in His history after 
His birth affected His nature. And yet He says, "I 
sanctify Myself." 2 He did it in the sense of utter aban- 
donment of His human will, and individuality to God's 
will and purposes. Through the eternal Spirit He of- 
fered Himself "without spot" to God, ceasing thereby 
to live a separate outward conscious life as a man, giv- 



Eph. iv. 24. 2 John xvii. 19. 



42 The Hopk of His Calling. 

ing Himself up to God, and becoming an instrument 
only; a rational, yielded instrument in the hands of 
the Holy Ghost, that being possessed of Him, "full" of 
Him, He might be used of Him in the fulfillment of 
all His will. "A man" approved of God among you by 
miracles and wonders and signs, which Gor did by 
him." x 

Now, it is no more true that He was in this way 
sanctified in His outward conscious life, or "walk," 
ihan it is true that we must be. Neither is it any 1 more 
certain that His consecration to this life, was volun- 
tary, than it is that it must be so with us. Just as 
literally as He rationally presented Himself to God, 
must we present our bodies "a living sacrifice" 2 to Him. 
That His "walk," or outward conscious life was always 
and uninterruptedly sanctified and holy from His fleshly 
birth, and that in this respect He differed from all other 
liuman beings, is of course, true. But the reason of it 
is obvious. His human soul, as we have elsewhere 
seen, was not like our fallen souls, but, on the contrary, 
it was the type and pattern of the regenerated soul, 
or "new man" in us. His was the first created human 
soul, and represented an order of being that did not 
exist up to that time, and into which all saved souls 
were to be translated by a new creation at the hands 
of God. His soul was never fallen, and hence had 
existed with the Father in heaven since before the world 
was. His consecration was not made after His advent, 
but before it; and His sanctification by the Father was 
given before He was "sent." Hence He was wholly pos- 
sessed by the Spirit from His conception, so that He 



1 Acts ii. 22. 2 Rom. xii. 1. 



Two Sanctifications. 43 

was called "that holy thing" even before He was born. 
By virtue, therefore, of arrangements made before He 
left the Father in heaven, He, through entire and per- 
fect self-abandonment to God, entered at once upon 
anointed and uninterruptedly triumphant life. 

Not so, however, with us. We being born in sin, 
must be changed into His "image," and cannot enter 
conscious spiritual life until this is done. It is then, 
only — when we enter conscious spiritual life — that we 
can wholly consecrate, or present ourselves "a living 
sacrifice" to G-od, and through the same power — the 
Holy Ghost — enter the same sanctification of outward 
or conscious life. But we may not, and generally do 
not, at once see this fact. We may think we have in- 
herent strength, and can of ourselves live outwardly the 
holy nature given us in regeneration, and may essay 
to do it, and despite failures persist long in trying to 
do so. We fail, but we do not understand the cause. 
We will likely think the fault must be in our not trying 
hard enough. We may not even know the promise of 
complete triumph as a gift. The way to sanctification 
of outward conscious life may, therefore, have to be 
taught us in God's fatherly dealings with us. We 
neither know ourselves nor Him. We know we love 
Him, and want to please Him. This is involved in the 
nature of the abstract, spiritual life given us; but we 
may not know we are impotent to deal with His mighty 
spiritual foes, against which we must contend in trying 
to live a holy life. We may not know that the power 
to act outwardly His will must as literally be given 
as this new life itself. That this is true seems certain 
from the scriptures. 

Paul speaks of the Spirit as being in us before we 



44 The Hope of His Calling. 

are necessarily "strengthened with might" by Him; be- 
fore we are enabled to "comprehend" the love of Christ 
in its length and breadth and height and depth; before 
we are "filled with all the fullness of God." Let us- 
not suppose that He is there as an inactive guest, that 
He is not in any way asserting His energy, because He 
has not done for us the things here mentioned. 

We have very carefully to consider, that there is in 
us an "inner/' and an "outward man" — that these in 
the Christian are as distinct from each other in nature 
as if they were separate entities occupying different 
bodies. The one an increasing life, the other a de- 
creasing life; the one a sanctified life, the other carnal 
and unsanctified. The one is the "new man" "created 
in righteousness and true holiness" 1 — the regenerated, 
and perfected soul — the other is the unregenerate and 
sinful "flesh." 2 These two natures exist in every Chris- 
tian till death, and are so distinct from each other that 
they are, as we have seen, personated in the scriptures. 
In order to understand the scriptures, therefore, they 
must be distinguished from each other, and we must 
see to which of them reference is had in them. Just 
as things are said of Christ which refer to His humanity 
only, so are things said of the saint that refer exclusively 
to the "new man." It is the "new man" only, that is 
ever sanctified in nature, and this sanctification must,, 
as we have seen, be given before sanctification of con- 
scious life can even be sought by us, as the latter is 
given in answer to the conscious solicitation of the 
"new man." That this is true I will try to show from 
the word. 



x Eph. iv. 24. 2 Gal. v. 17; Rom. vii. 25. 



Two Sanctifications. 45 

Take the Corinthians. In the second verse of the 
first chapter of Paul's first epistle to them, and as a 
part of the address of the epistle, he says, "to them 
that are sanctified in Christ Jesus called to be saints." 1 
To such he proposed to write, and such he calls the 
"church of God" at Corinth. And yet in the third 
chapter he says they are "carnal," and charges them 
with many and grave faults. "I, brethren, could not 
speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, 
even as unto babes in Christ." 2 "Ye are yet carnal." 3 
"Are ye not carnal, and walk as men? 4 Over and 
over he charges them with carnality, pointing out their 
carnal conduct. And yet they were "sanctified," and 
were so addressed by Him. 

Now this is a statement of facts. They are in com- 
plete harmony with the whole teaching of the scriptures. 
And yet they cannot be understood and made to har- 
monize with them, without recognizing the duplex 
nature of man, and that the sanctification here referred 
to, has to do with one only of these natures. If we 
look at these people in the light of these charges, and 
consider that they refer to the whole man, "inward" 
and "outward" alike, who would say that they were 
sanctified? Can a man be both sanctified and carnal 
in the same part of his nature at the same time? 
Has not the Master said, a good tree cannot bring forth 
evil fruit? Can a spring at the same place send forth 
both salt water and fresh? Paul does not say they 
are partially sanctified. He says they "are sanctified in 
Christ Jesus." The sanctification spoken of by him was 
complete and perfect. It was "in Christ Jesus," and 



1 1 Cor. i. 2. 2 1 Cor. iii. 1. 3 1 Cor. iii. 3. * 1 Cor. iii. 3. 



46 Thk Hope of His Calling. 

in him is "no sin." Neither does he intimate that any 
thing is lacking in this sanetification in any after part 
of the epistle. When accusing them in such strong 
terms of carnality, he does not qualify what he has 
said on this point. He does not say, "I addressed you 
as sanctified, but I find I was mistaken. I find you are, 
in truth, not at all sanctified but very carnal; so I must 
qualify the expression." On the contrary, after he 
has set forth their misdoings, and repeatedly, as we 
have seen, declared they were carnal, and "walked as 
men," he repeats specifically and unqualifiedly, that 
they are sanctified. "But ye are washed, but ye are 
sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord 
Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." 1 Evidently he 
is not in either instance speaking of the "outward 
man," or "walk," for in that respect such language 
could not have been used of them. This much is cer- 
tain, for it is visible, and expressly declared of them. 
Outwardly they were unsanctified. 

From these considerations it appears that a saint can, 
in some sense, "be sanctified in Christ Jesus" and "by 
the Spirit of our God," and at the same time be carnal 
in his "walk," or, outward life. 

Now, in whatever sense they were sanctified at all, 
they were perfectly sanctified. It was "in Christ Jesus" 
and by "the Spirit of our God." It was given in con- 
nection with the "washing of regeneration." From 
which it appears that in the sense here referred to, we 
are sanctified when we are "born again," or "elected" 
to life. And this view harmonizes with other plain scrip- 
tures on the same subject. Peter says of the Christian, 

z lCor. vi. 11. 



Two Sanctifications. 47 

"Elect . . . .through sanctification of the Spirit, unto 
obedience/' Paul, in his second Epistle to the Thes- 
salcnians, having reference to the same thing, says, 
"God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation 
through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the 
truth/' 2 In both of these passages Ave find that this 
sanctification is made a condition of salvation. It must 
therefore be given in the very beginning. In one place 
it is associated with regeneration as being simultaneous 
with it. In another, it is made to precede election, be- 
ing that through which we are "elected/' In another, 
it is made the act in which we are "chosen" of God. It 
is also made contemporaneous with saving faith. In 
all of which it is unmistakably set forth as one of the 
first works of the Spirit in the soul of the saint. It is 
not a process. It is, and from these references must be, 
an instantaneous and complete work. 

It was to this sanctification that Paul referred in the 
address of his letter to the Corinthians, and so we can- 
not be surprised at the confidence with which it is as- 
serted. As truly as God had "chosen" them to salva- 
tion, He had sanctified them. If they had been "elect- 
ed" to life at all, it had been done through this sancti- 
fication. If they were even "babes in Christ" they 
could only have entered Him at all by the "sanctifica- 
tion of the Spirit and belief of the truth." There was 
no qualification, because he spake a certain and neces- 
sary truth. No matter how carnal their outward 
"walk," it remained as true as God's word that if they 
were saints at all they were "sanctified in Christ 
Jesus." 



'IPet. i. 2. 2 2Thess. ii. 13. 



48 The Hopk of His Calling. 

Now what is sanctification ? It is a setting apart to 
God's service. Some part of us is therefore, at regen- 
eration, set apart to His service, and that part of us is 
"in Christ Jesus." What part is this? Evidently it 
must be the soul, the "new man," who has by the Spirit 
been "baptized into Christ," and which is in regenera- 
tion plainly said to be "created in righteousness and 
true holiness," 1 renewed in knowledge after the "im- 
age of Him that created him." 2 What is holiness but 
.sanctification ? And how can the "new man" be created 
"in righteousness and true holiness" without sanctifica- 
tion? Sanctification, then, is by express declaration a 
part, or characteristic, of the very creation of the "new 
man." Sanctification itself sets apart to service. It is 
"unto obedience," and obedience is perfect service. 
f But the work of sanctification is not necessarily alike 
in all things. It may involve the nature of the thing 
sanctified, and it may not. It sets apart. That is all. 
ISTow, there are more ways than one of setting things 
apart to God's service, as I think we can hardly fail to 
see. There must always be a will, and a worshiper, but 
it does not follow that this will and holy nature must be 
in the thing sanctified, s or set apart. It may be in him 
only who sets the thing apart to service. A mountain, 
temple, or vessel may be set apart to a sacred use. They 
would in no sense be changed. They do nothing. They 
experience nothing. They are, however, sanctified or 
set apart to God's service by the will and act of him who 
is rational, and has a moral nature capable of worship. 
A man might set apart a horse to the service of a friend 
in precisely the same way. It might be very much 



1 Eph. iv. 24. 8 Col. iii. 10. 



Two Sanctifications. 49 

against the will of the horse. He might vehemently re- 
sist, and yet under the coercion of overmastering power 
he might be used and made to serve a very valuable pur- 
pose. He remains wholly unchanged in nature and dis- 
position, and is entitled to no credit certainly, and yet 
he is actually set apart to the credit of the owner. 

There is, however, another sanctification radically 
different from these. It is a sanctification that makes a 
worshiper. One in which the being sanctified becomes 
thereby possessed of a nature that prompts, and impels 
as matter of choice and disposition to service, indepen- 
dently of all outward overpowering influences. It in- 
volves the whole moral being. The will is radically and 
entirely changed and put into harmony with the will of 
God. The affections are set upon new and different 
things. The things once hated are now loved. All 
things become new. This is sanctification of nature — 
sanctification in the highest and deepest sense of the 
word — sanctification that makes a worshiper of its ob- 
ject. 

These distinctions are plain and scriptural, and must 
he kept in mind if we are to understand God's dealings 
with man in salvation. 

The sanctification which we have been discussing 
in connection with the soul, or "new man" is of the 
last kind. It is distinctively a sanctification of moral 
nature, in which the soul, from hating God, and re- 
jecting His law, comes to love God and to delight in 
keeping His law. What was before forced and un- 
willing submission, has become a service of choice and 
of delight. It is a new creation, a "new creature," a 
"new man." God is the workman and "we are His 
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good 
4 



50 The Hope of His Causing. 

works/' 1 And if in this new creation of God's, He 
undertakes to create "unto good works/' which can 
mean nothing else than a nature that prompts and 
impels us, as matter of choice and disposition, to good 
works, we must allow that He cannot fail of entire 
and complete success. He must be supposed to accom- 
plish His purpose. A nature is given in perfect har- 
mony with His law, a nature like His own nature, of 
divine love, which is the fulfilment of the law. 

Of course this sanctification is instantaneous and com- 
plete. In the highest sense of the word it is perfect,, 
ior it is "created in righteousness and true holiness." 
It is God's own work and after His own "image." It 
is accomplished, as must be seen from these texts, in 
regeneration. It is the end, and purpose, and effect, 
of regeneration. It is the doing away of the old re- 
bellious and hateful nature — the "old man" — and the 
creation of the "new man" with a nature in harmony 
with God's will. Since in this work we are as passive 
as the dust was, out of which Adam was created, there 
is no more reason why we should come from His hands 
imperfect in nature, than that he should have done so, 
and it is as certain that we do not. "Old things are 
passed away; behold all things are become new. And 
all things are of God." 2 Reason about it as we may, 
the truth as it is declared in His own word remains, 
that out of the annihilation of the old nature of the 
soul, God in regeneration brings into the world an 
entirely "new man," an exact "image of His Son," for 
every part of whose moral nature, He assumes respons- 
ibility. 



'Eph. ii. 10. 2 2Cor. v. 17. 



Two Sanctifications. 51 

This "new man" is not only perfect by creation, but 
its perfection is made eternal. "By one offering He 
hath perfected forever them that are sanctified/' 1 Of" 
course this refers as it necessarily must, to that sanc- 
tification which involves the nature of the soul, and 
which as we have seen takes place at, and in, regen- 
eration. So that the soul is not only sanctified and 
perfected but its sanctification is eternal. It is simply 
the gift of "eternal life" in Christ Jesus. "This is 
the record, that God hath given unto us eternal life,, 
and this life is in His Son." 2 He came to bring it into 
the world. It is in Him. He imparts it unto us. It 
is not physical life. It is not eternal spiritual existence 
only. We suppose that sinners are in this sense im- 
mortal. It is a life. A distinct form and character- 
of spiritual life. It is the same life Jesus had as a. 
man. He imparts His own life to us. In the creation, 
of His. human soul, life is created for all the foreknown 
ones who should become heirs of salvation. Our calling 
and grace, "was given us in Christ Jesus before the 
world began, but is now made manifest." 3 It is in 
Him, and of Him — His own human life. He brings 
to us the life God gave to Him in the creation of 
His human soul, and imparts it to us in regeneration. 
From that moment an exact "image" of His own human 
soul is reproduced in us — the "new man." He was to 
be the "first born among many brethren," 4 that is, 
among many beings of the same parentage — of the 
same order of life, and nature, that He Himself, as 
a man, had. This is the life the Father has sent into 
the world. It is a specific, definite life — the very life 



1 Heb. x. 14. 2 1 John v. 11. 3 2 Tim. i. 9, 10. * Rom. viii. 29. 



52 The Hope of His Calling. 

of Jesus' human soul. What then must be the char- 
acter of this life? It is, and must be, holy in nature, 
and is as eternal in its inseparableness from God's love, 
and preserving power as is the human soul of Jesus. 
The eternity of this life as necessarily involves the 
preservation of its holy nature in us, as it does its 
perpetuity. As immortality in the sense of endless 
existence, belongs to all alike, both saved and unsaved, 
this cannot be the distinguishing peculiarity of the 
"eternal life" given us in Christ. When it ceases to 
be holy, it ceases to be the life He gives, and therefore 
is not, and could not be, a fulfillment of the promise 
of "eternal life." How could it be otherwise? The 
very life, and only life, the Father has provided for 
us is "in His Son." Was it imperfect life? If it was, 
then Christ's life was imperfect, for it is expressly de- 
clared that He, Himself is our life; "Christ, our life." 1 
In endowments, nature, and substance, it is the life 
of His human soul. Hence it is that those who are 
by regeneration sanctified, that is, given this "eternal 
life" — "created in righteousness and true holiness" — 
in the "image of His Son" — are "perfected forever." 
This sanctification of soul, or holiness of the "new 
man," or "eternal life" given in Christ, is a character- 
istic of all Christians. The Corinthians had it, and yet 
they were not wholly sanctified. In outward conscious 
life, they were "carnal, and walked as men." Un- 
doubtedly they needed an additional sanctification. 
Paul prayed for the Thessalonians, who had already 
been "elected" or, "chosen" through sanctification of 
their souls, that they might be "wholly sanctified." 

x Col. iii. 4. 



Two Sanctifications. 53 

They did not need that the sanctification already given 
them undergo a change. It could need no change. It 
was "in righteousness and true holiness," and hence 
could not be made more perfect. Therefore the trouble 
with these Thessalonians was not that they needed an 
improvement upon the sanctification already given, but 
an entirely new and distinct sanctification, different in 
character and design. This first sanctification perfects 
the nature of the soul, but does not give the power 
necessary in order to enable us to outwardly "walk" in 
holiness, thus leaving us in need of another sanctifica- 
tion, as we will endeavor to more fully show in the 
next chapter. 



SANCTIFICATION OF NATURE, IN CONTRA- 

DISTINCTION TO SANCTIFICATION 

OF CONSCIOUS LIFE, OR 

"WALK" 

"We come now to consider that in this sanctification 
of the nature of the soul, the "flesh" or, "outward 
man/ 7 has not; only not been sanctified, but has not 
been touched at all. The "new man" which only has 
part in this sanctification, is created "in Christ Jesus," 
but the flesh, we know, is never in Him. "Flesh and 
blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." x It is 
created in the new birth, by being born of the Spirit, 
but "that which is born of the Spirit, is spirit," 2 and 
the flesh is not, and does not in this life become spirit. 
It is to be sown in "corruption" 3 a "natural body." 3 
Hence the "flesh" is not affected by the sanctification of 
the "new man" which must therefore be the "inner 
man," or, soul. 

It is the "inner man," 4 the "inward man," 5 in con- 
tradistinction to the "outward man," 6 or, the "flesh." 7 
Hence it is we hear Paul saying in the midst of a record 
of failure to subdue the "flesh," and do "that which 
is good" in his conscious, outward life, "I delight 
in the law of God after the inward man." 5 And again, 
"though the outward man perish, yet the inward man 
is renewed day by day." 6 And yet again, "strengthened 



1 1 Cor. xv. 50. 2 John iii. 6. 3 1 Cor. xv. 42, 44. * Eph. iii. 16. 
s Eom. vii. 22. 6 2 Cor. iv. 16. * Kom. vii. 25. 

(54) 



Sanctification of Nature. 55 

with might by His Spirit in the inner man." * This 
inner life is as we have elsewhere seen, a perfected life. 
In it there are no remains of carnality, no traces of 
inbred or Adamic sin. These belong to the "flesh" 
still, in which the "old man," or nature, asserts itself 
in "lusts, which war against the soul." 2 

This distinction must be recognized. In no other 
way can the scriptures be explained and made to har- 
monize with themselves. Look at 1 John. If we allow 
that it refers to the whole man as an indivisible moral 
entity, involving alike the "inward" and the "outward" 
man, in responsibility for outward life, then the whole 
world to-day is doubtless lost. Let us examine our- 
selves by this test and see where we stand. "Who- 
soever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known 
Him." 3 "He that committeth sin is of the devil." 4 
"Whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that 
is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked 
one toucheth him not." 5 "Whosoever is born of God 
doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: 
and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." 6 Here 
is the test. Whosoever sinneth is a child of the devil, 
has never been born of God, neither known Him as 
a savior, for if he had been born of God, he would 
not, and could not sin, neither could that, wicked one 
touch him. This is the plain, and necessary meaning 
of these scriptures. There is a sense then, there must 
be, in which the man who is a Christian at all, is in 
nature and life free from sin. It does not say we will 
not practice gross sin, or even practice sin at all. It 



1 Eph. iii. 16. 2 1 Pet. ii. 11. 3 1 j hn iii. 6. * 1 John iii. 8. 
^ 1 John v. 18. 6 1 John iii. 9. 



56 The Hope of His Calling. 

does not mean that. The revised version makes it if 
possible still more emphatic. "Whosoever is begotten 
of God doeth no sin." That there is then, a sense in 
which the Christian does not sin is certain. It is folly 
to attempt to evade, or explain away these scriptures. 
In the face of them we are driven to one of two con- 
clusions. Either those are right who make entire free- 
dom from the commission of sin a condition in order 
to salvation, or else these texts must be understood 
to refer to the "new man" only. We must recognize 
and account for them. They are in the Bible. They 
are plain and unmistakable, and they mean sinlessness, 
and nothing less. If they do Lot refer to the soul, then 
they refer to the whole man, and if they refer to the 
latter, then no man who commits the least sin is, or 
ever has been, a Christian. It is as certain that the 
truly regenerate in some sense, and that a high and 
important sense, are free from the commission of sin, 
as it is that these words of John were inspired of God. 
It does not refer to degTee of sin. It does not refer 
to a moral state of protracted sin. It refers to any 
kind or character of wilful, responsible sin. 

Again, however, the same evangelist says, "If we say 
that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the 
truth is not in us." 1 How can he say this in one 
sentence, and in another, in the same epistle, declare 
that if born of God we do not, and cannot sin, if in 
both instances he refers to the same part of our nature 
and being? Can we believe this to be the case? 

And why should we do so, when to recognize the 
"inward" and the "outward man," thus personated in 

1 John i. 8. 



Sanctification of Nature. 57- 

the word itself, in their distinct and clearly defined 
natures, and that it is the "inner man" only that has 
volition and a responsible moral nature — that is in an 
important sense saved or lost; that it only ever is in 
this life "born of God," and not the "flesh" in which 
"the law of sin" remains; 1 that the inward man, or 
"new man" only, is "created in righteousness and true 
holiness;" 2 when I say, to do this, is simply to accept 
the plain word of God as it relates to these things. 
How promptly, beautifully, and completely such a view 
harmonizes all parts of the Bible. We are told that 
"Whosoever is born of God" — that is undoubtedly, the 
soul, or, "new man," as it only is born of God, "cannot 
sin because he is born of God." There is a plain reason 
assigned for it, the sinlessness standing as the necessary 
effect of a carefully mentioned cause — that he is "born 
of God." Suppose I should say, Satan cannot sin be- 
cause Jesus was born of God. You would say my 
reasoning was bad; that there is no necessary connection 
between my premise and my conclusion. Suppose then 
I should say the "flesh," which is personated in the 
Bible as the "outward man," and is by nature at enmity 
with God, cannot have sin, because the soul is born of 
God. There is the same fatal defect. If there is in 
truth, and the Bible declares it, an "inner man" and 
"an outer man," then the fact that the "inner man" is 
born of God, cannot operate as a cause why the "outer 
man," who is not born of God, should be changed in 
nature. And yet this is the cause, and the only cause, 
that is mentioned why he cannot sin. We cannot sin 
"because" we are "born" of God, but the "flesh" is not 



1 Eom. vii. 23. 2 Eph. iv. 24. 



58 The Hope of His Caujng. 

"born of God/' therefore it is not included in this 
text; and if we exclude it, then we have what we have 
been trying to show, a sanctified and perfected soul, 
or, "inner man" preserved forever free from sin. 

I hope then we see tha.t man is duplex in his nature. 
That he has a carnal nature, and a spiritual nature, 
and that the spiritual nature only is involved in the 
sanctdfication of which Paul spake in the address of his 
epistle to the Corinthians, in seeing which, all the dif- 
ficulty of comprehending his words to them disappears. 
They were "carnal" not through defect in the nature 
of the soul, but through its weakness in the presence 
of powerful evil influences, against which it has no 
promise of being able, in its own strength to stand. 
The trouble was not that they did not try, but that 
they did not trust. Not that they could have delivered 
themselves, but that they did not rightly seek deliver- 
ance. They were at fault, not because they could of 
themselves have kept from "walking as men," but be- 
cause they did not "walk by the Spirit." 

With this view, we see at once perfect harmony be- 
tween Paul in Eomans vii. and 1 John. When Paul says, 
"the evil which I would not, that I do," 1 and "the 
good that I would I do not," he speaks not of wilful 
acts, but of what is done by him in a state of un- 
willing and hateful captivity. He does not thereby 
bring himself within the condemnation of John, as he* 
himself plainly declares, saying, "Now if I do that I 
would not," the thing I do not will to do — but what I 
loathe and hate, "it is no more I that do it," 2 I am 
not guilty. It is not the "'new man," for with the 



1 Rom. vii. 19. 2 Eom. vii. 20. 



Sanctification of Nature. 59 

"new or "inward man/' "I delight in the law of 
•God." 1 

Again let us understand that it is one thing to do 
a, thing knowingly and may he another to do it wilfully. 
If there were no extraneous influence of any kind, noth- 
ing to resist and overpower the soul and prevent it 
doing according to its will, then indeed might all our 
conscious acts be wilful. But such is not the case in 
fact. Paul knows the evil he does, or else he would 
not know that he opposed it. It is something repug- 
nant to him, something he would not do. Yet he does 
do it. He does it, as he declares, as an unwilling 
"captive." We must remember that we war against 
mighty, invisible spiritual "principalities and powers," 
that these powers are more mighty than we. Suppose 
while I am out on the farm, a desperado comes to my 
house, and finding one of my little children there alone, 
flourishes a club and commands him to set fire to my 
house. He says, "I do not want to burn down the 
Iiouse. It is my father's house, and I do not want to 
destroy it." But, on pain of being beaten to> death, 
the rough man commands instant obedience. In this 
.state of captivity he sets fire to it, and burns it down. 
Did he know the effect of what he was doing? Cer- 
tainly. But did he do it wilfully? Would I hold 
Iiim morally responsible? Did he love me less the 
moment he did the deed, than when he left my arms? 
-Not at all. We have no trouble in seeing the distinc- 
tion in a case like this, but we are slow to see it where 
invisible forces dominate the life. And yet it is true 
there also, as Paul plainly declares. Now I am aware 



1 Rom. vii. 22. 



60 Thk Hope of His Casing. 

that there are those who- are unprepared to see this 
distinction. So long as a man is conscious that he has 
not in fact wholly consecrated himself, or done his 
very best to be wholly sanctified in his conscious life,, 
so long is he apt to imagine that he could keep the' 
law if he were but to do his very best. It is strange, 
but true, that the less we have tried to be perfect 
the more confidence we have in the flesh that we could 
be, and the less charity we have for those who are not. 
A prisoner may be very confident that when he wishes, 
to do so, he can break the chains that hold him. He 
is not uneasy therefore, and is surprised that others 
whom he sees apparently anxious to escape, should not 
succeed. But when he does his very best and fails, his 
confidence will weaken. And when he finds a thousand 
honest efforts equally fruitless, he will begin to realize 
the truth that he cannot do it. If we have never so 
resisted sin as to satisfy us that it can take us captive, 
we may be self-confident. But if every power of the 
soul has been set upon holiness and no greater success 
attended our efforts than before; if we have tried it till 
we know, as well as we can know anything, that we 
cannot of ourselves overcome sin in the flesh, then 
can we understand Paul. The saint does not sin wil- 
fully. If he did there would be "no more sacrifice for 
sins/' 1 We either do not sin wilfully, or else we are 
not Christians. We know we do evil. We all acknowl- 
edge it. Are we Christians, or are we not? Paul for 
one, says, he knows he is: that when he does "evil" 
it is not wilful. Notice how the eighth chapter starts 
out, "There is therefore now no condemnation to thenx 

*Heb. x.26. 



Sanctification of Naturk. 6i 

which are in Christ Jesus." 1 What can this "there- 
fore" refer to other than what has just preceded it 
in the seventh, the last sentence and clause of which 
says that with the "flesh" he serves the law of sin, 
but with which is coupled the statement also, that with 
the "mind," which he here uses, as shown in the con- 
text, for "inward man," he serves "the law of God." 
"There is therefore," that is to say, for the reasons just 
stated, that if I do that I would not, it is no more 
I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me, etc.; for 
these reasons, "there is now no condemnation to them 
that are in Christ Jesus;" or in other words, to the 
Christian of whom he has been speaking. 

So I hope we see there must be a distinction in the 
mind between these two natures, and that the soul only 
is changed by the new birth, and hence that it only 
has the certainty of arbitrary preservation in holiness 
of nature. 

It should further be borne in mind, that, as we 
have seen, the sanctification of the soul, or "new man," 
involves the nature only. It is a given life — "eternal 
life" — but in giving this life, no new, or increased en- 
dowment of power is given. It is within itself left as 
dependent as before. It was of the "new man," let us 
not forget, that Jesus said, "without me ye can do 
nothing." 2 And certainly it was of a sanctified and 
perfect soul He spake, when He said, "Verily, verily, 
I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of Himself," 3 
There were no imperfections in Him, no traces of 
Adamic, or inbred sin, and yet He was powerless as a 
man to overcome the foes of holiness and of God. And 



1 Rom. viii. 1. 2 John xv. 5. 3 John v. 19. 



62 The Hope op His Calling. 

so it is of the "new man." To have a holy and a 
perfect nature, a divine life created in us, has nothing 
to do with the question of inherent power. And hence 
without Christ it can do nothing. This does not 
jeopardize the abstract spiritual life of the soul, or 
"new man." It is never left alone. It always has the 
Spirit and power of Christ in it for its protection, and 
preservation, independently of causation, or conscious- 
ness on our part, as is said, "Your life is hid with Christ 
in God." x And again, "Sanctified by God the Father, 
and preserved in Jesus Christ." 2 God's Spirit is, there- 
fore, always in the "inner man" of the regenerate. 
"Christ, our life," 3 is forever enthroned as king and 
sovereign of the regenerated soul. His law is written in 
its nature. "I will put my laws into their mind, and 
write them in their hearts." 4 From the moment of its 
creation, the moment of its baptism by the Holy Spirit 
"into Christ," 5 from that moment we find His "Spirit 
in the inner man;" 6 there to reign in it, to be its life, 
to renew it from day to day, to preserve it in holiness; 
and to do this independently of causation or conscious- 
ness on our part, as matter of covenant grace. "That 
wicked one toucheth him not." He doth not sin for 
his seed remaineth in him, and "he cannot sin because 
he is born of God." The soul's redemption is, at regen- 
eration, when the "new man" is "created in righteous- 
ness and true holiness," complete and eternal. He hath 
been translated out of the "power of Satan" 7 into God. 
The kingdom of God is "within" him, 8 and it "is an 



1 Col. hi. 3. 2 Judel. 3 Col. iii. 4. * Heb. viii. 10. sEph. 
iv. 5 ; 1 Cor. xii. 13 ; Gal. iii. 27. 6 Eph. iii. 16. * Acts xxvi. 18. 



'Luke xvii. 21. 



Sanctification of Nature. 63 

everlasting kingdom." x No power can enter the inner 
life, therefore, and destroy it, except he "first bind the 
strong man" that is enthroned in it. 2 

Here is an unconditional and "uninterrupted covenant 
work of the Spirit in the "inner man," making real 
the gift of God to us of "eternal life." "Whosoever 
liveth and believeth in me shall never die." 3 "He 
hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee."* 
"Your life is hid with Christ in God." 5 Such is His 
promise, and it is fulfilled in the work of the Spirit 
in the "inner man." 

Hence it was that in the midst of such frailty, Paul 
could say, "I delight in the law of God after the in- 
ward man." "With the mind" — the mind in which 
God has put His laws — "with the mind I, myself serve 
the law of God." "I, myself" — the really responsible 
part of my being, the redeemed part, the "new man," 
"I, myself serve the law of God." 

From these considerations, I think we may see that 
here is an office work of the Holy Spirit in the "inner 
man" that sufficiently accounts for His uninterrupted 
presence there, independently of the question of out- 
ward sanctification, or "walk;" a sufficient reason why 
we should expect His presence there whether, in ad- 
dition to this covenant work of preserving the soul, 
or "new man" in holiness, the life, also, is "strengthened 
with might" by Him so that we "walk by the Spirit" 
in outward holiness also, or not. 



*Psa. cxlv. 13. 2 Matt. xii. 28, 29. 3j hn xi. 26. 4 Heb. 
xiii. 5. s Col. iii. 3. 



CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS SPIRITUAL 
LIFE DISTINGUISHED* 

And now having considered the mighty, certain, and 
uninterrupted presence and work of the Holy Spirit 
in the "inner man/' in the fulfilment of a covenant 
work of grace in the impartation and preservation of 
abstract spiritual life in the soul, we have further to 
consider the nature of this life, and that there is an- 
other phase of spiritual life wholly different from this, 
-and equally dependent upon the same Spirit; that 
there is spiritually, as well as physically, an unconscious, 
and a conscious life; a life that we live without 
volition, or causation on our part, or even knowing 
how we live it, and also another life that is conscious 
with us. 

We do not know how the heart-pump is worked. It 
requires force to do it, but we do not know the location 
of that force, or the laws by which it is exerted. It 
is not a matter of volition or causation on our part, 
or even of consciousness. It is done by an unseen 
hand. It is beyond us. This force belongs to abstract 
physical life. We do not understand it, did not create 
it, and can by no means perpetuate it. No more do 
we understand how this life gives physical strength, or 
will power, cr the powers of the mind. All these things 
are in it, arbitrarily given to us. We do not know of 
ourselves whence they are. 

There is with us, however, another physical life. 
These mysterious and unsought endowments of mind, 

(64) 



Spiritual Life Distinguished. 65 

will, the affections, and physical strength; and the 
knowledge that we can exert and control them, give 
to us the consciousness of individuality, and of the 
power of self-assertion. This is what we may call con- 
scious life — life in which we think, and plan, and out- 
wardly execute; a life in which, in our relations to 
things without, we make manifest the nature, and power 
of the given life within. 

ISTow it is the same with spiritual life. There is the 
unknowable gift of abstract spiritual life — the "new 
man" — created in us in answer to saving faith, and 
perpetuated in us by the mighty power of God, in- 
dependent of causation on our part, as matter of cove- 
nant grace; a life the forces of which we no more create 
or comprehend than we do the forces of abstract physical 
life; a life that is in a most literal and comprehensive 
sense, "the gift of God." The wind bloweth where it 
listeth, and thou nearest the sound thereof but canst 
tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth; so is this 
life that is born of the Spirit. It involves the spiritual 
nature and all inherent spiritual forces. It determines 
wholly our moral character. What is given to us in it, 
in the way of spiritual nature and forces, we have, no 
more, no less. This is abstract, involuntary, given 
spiritual life — the "new man." 

On the other hand, just as we have self-consciousness, 
and the power of self-assertion in physical life, so have 
we in spiritual life. In its relations to other lives, and 
outward things, and to spiritual forces that touch it 
within, this new spiritual life consciously asserts its 
forces, endeavoring to live outwardly its will and 
nature. This is what may be called conscious 
spiritual life. Now while the former, or abstract 
5 



66 Thk Hope of His Calling. 

life^, is "in righteousness and true holiness" created 
in us by regeneration, and is vouchsafed to us for- 
ever as matter of covenant grace, being preserved in 
us independently of our volition, which it, in fact, itself 
gives to'us; or of causation on our part, by the workings 
of the infinite power of the Spirit, arbitrarily, and unin- 
terruptedly exerted in the "inner man," which is this 
new and holy life itself, thereby making real the "gift 
of God" to us of "eternal life," in response to our faith 
in the acceptance of Christ as a personal Savior; while 
I say this is true of the abstract spiritual life, it is by no 
means so with the conscious spiritual life. It depends 
upon different conditions. 

The abstract life, being of necessity without causa- 
tion, or consciousness on our part, will have to be pre- 
served in us, if at all, by a power outside of us, indepen- 
dently of our volition, and without our knowledge of 
the forces by which it is done. But not so with the con- 
scious life, or "walk." It being conscious life, its forces, 
will be consciously and designedly employed; and if we 
find help in our efforts to subdue and overcome the foes 
that beset us in trying to maintain holiness in this life, 
we may expect to consciously and rationally seek this 
help; and to do so must know whence it is to come, and 
how it is to be obtained. I say this is reasonable, and as 
a general rule it is true. Let it not be supposed, how- 
ever, that we will be left entirely unprotected in the 
absence of this conscious solicitation and faith. We 
will, in a degree, be protected in this outward life against 
Satan though we may be unconscious of the fact, by 
a general spiritual providence; but this is not the 
principle upon which we are to expect the attainment 
of holiness in it. Until we have knowledge of God's 



Spiritual I^ife Distinguished. 67 

power "to usward who believe/' and of His willing- 
ness to give needed strength to overcome "sin in the 
flesh/' and consciously seek it of Him, we will remain 
weak, and in His fatherly dealings with us, may, and 
doubtless will at times, as matter of chastening, and 
teaching, be left largely to our own inherent strength 
in efforts to be outwardly holy; in which case, as the 
spiritual foes against which we must contend, are more 
mighty than ourselves, we will of necessity, fail of our 
purpose, however earnestly we may try. We will find 
that integrity of motive, is not enough; that we are 
impotent, and must have power before we can out- 
Avardly live the holy nature that is given us in the new 
birth. We will have life but will not be able to "walk." 
We will be "babes in Christ," x undeformed, indeed,, 
as to nature, but without power. In such a state of 
spiritual babyhood, we will be as helpless spiritually- 
as we are physically helpless in physical babyhood. The 
"babe" cannot "walk." We may in this state know 
comparatively nothing of our Father, but as the mother 
knows her babe however ignorant and helpless it may 
be, so we "will be known of" Him, 2 and He will take 
care of the "eternal life" He has given us. Before we 
can have His power, however, in the sanctiflcation of 
our outward lives, or "walk," we must find Him out. 
We must see His fatherhood and our dependence upon 
Him. We must by faith consciously look to Him for it. 
We must "walk by the Spirit." 

Let us understand that there is, furthermore, a dif- 
ference between conscious physical, and conscious spir- 
itual life. The former deals with physical forces which 



z lCor. iii. 1. 2 Gal. iv. 9. 



68 The Hope of His Calling. 

are in subordination to the will; the latter deals, not 
with these only, but with subtle, powerful and in- 
visible spiritual forces, which array themeslves violently 
against the will, and refuse to be subject to it, being 
more mighty than we. The "new man" is, therefore, 
as a stranger in a strange land of bitter foes, to whose 
superior power it will of necessity, unhelped, fall captive. 
Hence it is, the abstract spiritual life is an impotent 
life > not that it has imperfections of nature, but that 
it exists in the presence of opposing spiritual influences 
mightier than itself. 

To illustrate: Take a child over whom there is a 
contention on the part of two strong men, the father 
on the one side, and a powerful enemy on the other, 
as to which shall control its conduct. It is always in 
the hands of one or the other of these men. Either 
in the absence of the other can do as he likes with it. 
What individuality as shown in voluntary outward life 
can the child have? When it is not possessed by the 
one it is by the other. In such a state we might truly • 
say, it can of itself, do nothing. It may, indeed, have 
individuality in the matter of will and sentiment, but 
it is powerless. If the father overcomes the enemy 
and hedges him off, so that he touches it not, then it 
may, indeed, act freely to the extent of its powers, but 
this at last it does not do of itself. 

So in some degree is it with us. We stand between 
two overshadowing spiritual powers both in a sense 
;seeking to possess and control us. The one by violence, 
the other and mightier, by the consent of our wills. 
The one as an enemy and destroyer, the other as a 
Savior and Father. Now, while the soul is, in the 
ereation of the "new man," delivered from the power 



Spiritual Life Distinguished. 69 

of Satan, and he toucheth it not in the sense of power 
to destroy, or change its holy nature, still he impedes, 
and most successfully when allowed, every effort of 
this holy nature and life, to assert itself in outward 
service to God. Hence it is that the true Christian, 
possessed of a perfect nature, is yet as dependent upon 
the Spirit for a holy outward life or, "walk/' as if 
it had never been born again. Without Christ, we, 
in the presence of such an adversary, "can do nothing." 
And yet we may not, and generally do not, fully see 
this. By the constraining power of the divine love shed 
abroad in this new life by the Holy Ghost, we essay to 
do outwardly the will of the Father through the mem- 
bers of the body, in which the "new man" lives, but 
to our surprise and humiliation, we find there a "law 
of sin" "warring against the law of our minds," and 
bringing us into "captivity" to the law of sin in our 
members, so that while "to will is present" with us, 
"how to perform that which is good we find not." * 

This is a new phase of spiritual life, based upon new 
conditions — outward conscious life. It involves the 
"walk," and its character is "carnal" or, "spiritual," in 
the degree that we "walk as men," or, "walk by the 
Spirit." For it to be spiritual involves the exercise of 
controlling power over all the visible and invisible foes 
of God and His holiness — a power that is not inherent 
in us. Carnal weapons will not suffice, therefore, in 
this war against spiritual "principalities and powers." 2 
Though regenerate and perfect in nature, we stand as 
helpless in the presence of such forces, as was the child 
of whom we spake, in the hands of its giant enemy. 



1 Eom. vii. 14-25. 2 Eph. vi. 12. 



70 The Hope of His Calling. 

Satan, the author of sin and evil, sets himself with 
tremendous and never failing energy, against all good. 
It is he, supremely, with whom we have to contend in 
the conscious outward spiritual life, and it is he who, 
in the employment of all subordinate evil influences, 
undertakes to defeat our purposes to be holy, and show 
outwardly in our "walk" the nature and will of the 
"new man" to serve God in all things. He is mightier 
than we. He it is who takes us captive through the 
"flesh/' causing us to do the evil we would not, and 
holding us back from doing the good that we would. 

We can, therefore, no more live this outward con- 
scious spiritual life, or "walk," through self-efforts, how- 
ever earnestly exerted, than we can create, or perpetuate 
in us, the abstract spiritual life. We may think we can. 
We may essay to do it with great confidence, and per- 
sist long in the effort. But we will fail. 

Peter made this mistake. He thought it was a matter 
of integrity of purpose. He knew he loved the Master 
devoutly, and was sure he would never forsake Him. 
But he was mistaken. Was it because he was not a true 
Christian, and had not received the gift of perfect 
abstract spiritual life? No, it was not that. Had not 
Christ just said as much of the genuineness of his faith, 
and the blessedness of his state of soul, as has ever 
been said of the faith of any man in any age of the 
world? "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and 
blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father 
which is in heaven. And I say unto thee, That thou 
art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; 
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." x 



1 Matt. xvi. 17, 18. 



Spiritual L,ife Distinguished. 71 

Had He not told him that he was "every whit clean?" 1 
The soul was holy. What then? It was the plot of 
a foe that threatened him. Jesus said, "Simon, Simon, 
behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may 
sift you as wheat." 2 Here was a power he had not 
taken sufficiently into account. He had no doubt in 
a degree, been kept out of Satan's hands in the past 
by Jesus. Though he had been so far in his hands 
as to call from Him the awful rebuke, "Get thee be- 
hind me, Satan," yet it is certain he was, in a degree, 
and doubtless in a great degree, kept out of his hands. 
He can only deal with God's children when he is suf- 
fered to do so. The angel of the Lord encampeth round 
about them. There is an impassable hedge. It was so 
with Job, and it was so with Peter. If not so, why 
should Satan have come to Jesus for permission to 
sift Peter? Why did he not just take him and sift him? 
He was abundantly able. Peter could not have helped 
himself. He needed no assistance when he was allowed 
to get hold of him. So no doubt he was, in a degree, 
kept out of his hands all along. Jesus said, "I have kept 
them." He had, by His general spiritual providence, 
shielded him, but Peter was not conscious of this fact, 
and the time had now come for him to find out as he 
had not heretofore, his own impotency, and the source 
of protection. The Lord had graciously prayed that 
his faith might not fail, and that seemed to be about 
all there was left when Satan got through with him. 
Yet he was not expecting defeat. Immediately after 
Jesus had told him of this plot of Satan — the sig- 
nificance of which he did not at all understand — and 



x John xiii. 10. 2 Luke xxii. 31. 



72 The Hope of His Calling. 

had foretold him the result, he was very self-confident. 
He was not going to forsake Jesus. He did not know 
what the rest would do, could not speak for them, but 
he was certain he, for one, would not forsake Him. 
Though all the rest should do so he would not. He 
would go with him to prison, or die with Him first. 
Poor Peter. He seemed to think surely Jesus did not 
know how true he was. In all this he was sincere. 
But he had not calculated wisely. He did not under- 
stand his own weakness or the mighty power of the 
adversary. The time had come, it seems, for him to 
learn as he had never done before, what Jesus meant 
when He said, "Without Me ye can do nothing." How 
different must have been his views of himself after the 
night of the betrayal. When under the mighty tempta- 
tion with which Satan sifted him, he had cursed and 
sworn in Jesus' very hearing that he did not know 
Him, and the Master had turned and looked at him, 
recalling all to his mind, and he had gone out and 
wept like a child over his conduct, he must have seen 
himself in a very different light from what he had 
ever done before. He had not thought himself capable 
of such a thing, and could never have been convinced 
of it. But now he knows it. What a revelation it 
brought to him. If he had not been present on the 
night of the betrayal and had escaped this trial, how in- 
excusable and villainous such conduct in another would 
have looked to him. How utterly hypocritical he might 
have considered all their past pretenses of devotion. 
Xow he knows better. He knows he loves the Master. 
His faith did not fail him. Jesus prayed that it might 
not, and the Father always heard Him. But how utterly 
he must have abandoned hope in himself. How self- 



Spiritual Life Distinguished. 73. 

confidence must have perished. See how changed his 
manner after the resurrection. When the risen Master 
said, "Simon, Son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than 
these?" How modestly he answers, "Yea, Lord, thou 
knowest that I love thee." x That is all. There is 
no more boasting. He knows he loves Him, but he 
does not know what he might do, if he were sifted. 

Ah, it is a fearful thing to be turned over to Satan. 
to be sifted. Do we point the finger at Peter? We 
are not one whit stronger than he was. Let us beware 
that we do not force the Lord to teach us this fact in 
the same painful way. "Let him that thinketh he- 
standeth take heed lest he fall." It is a dreadful thing- 
to be turned over to Satan, but sometimes it seems. 
we can be made to see our impotency in no other way. 
There is a creek near my home. Suppose my little 
daughter thought she could safely walk the log across 
this stream and I could not make her understand but 
that she could do so. I am afraid she will attempt it 
sometime, and so I say, "I can convince her in no 
other way; I will let her try it." She confidently starts 
across, but soon falls in, and has to be delivered. I 
need not argue with her about it any more. I did 
not want her to suffer thus. I could not help it. She 
could be taught in no other way. What sufferings those 
bring upon themselves who cannot be convinced of 
their inability to stand against Satan without being 
turned over to him. But that is better than never to 
learn, and it seems too many can be taught self -im- 
potency in no other way. 

1 John xxi. 15. 



THE SPIRITS RELATIONS TO CONSCIOUS 
SPIRITUAL LIFE. 

In what has gone before we have tried to show that 
the abstract, unconscious spiritual life is, as matter of 
covenant grace, preserved in us in holiness, independ- 
ently of consciousness, or causation on our part, by the 
Holy Spirit, while the conscious spiritual life, or "walk" 
is not. It may be asked why the Spirit does not, by 
a like arbitrary and uninterrupted exertion of power, 
preserve the conscious outward life, or, "walk" in holi- 
ness also. 

There are manifold and great reasons why this should 
not be done, some of which we will now point out. 
This life is, as we have seen, rational conscious life. 
If the Spirit aids in it, He should be recognized, and 
trusted to do so. It would be the help of a friend. It 
would be a manifestation of care for, and love towards 
us. Such service involves in us as rational creatures 
ihe duty of recognition and gratitude. It should de- 
velop a growth of acquaintance and confidence. This, 
however, could not possibly be unless it were understood 
by us. It is, therefore, one of the very means by which 
we are to know him who has, being practically unknown 
to us, yet done so much for us, in the gift and pres- 
ervation of a holy inner life. There is now no longer 
.a reason why He should deal with us independently of 
our consciousness and solicitation. He has told us of 
our helplessness without Him, warned us of the ad- 
versary, and of His own power and willingness to deliver 
lis out of his hands. We are His children. His heart 
(74) 



The Spirit's Relations. 75 

is set upon us, and He would have us know it, that 
our love to Him may be increased and strengthened. 
In this conscious spiritual life, therefore, if we have 
the Spirit's power exerted in our behalf, it certainly is 
reasonable and right that we should come to our Father 
and ask Him for what we need, and look to Him for it. 
It is in these personal dealings with us, in the main, 
that we come to know Him. 

A general spiritual providence would be ruinous to 
us. We would not see God in it. We would enjoy His 
.gifts without knowing that they were gifts, or whence 
they came. We would think the power that kept us 
was inherent in ourselves. How could we ever learn 
that Satan stands by us, that he follows us up, ready, 
.and able, and eager, "as a roaring lion/ 7 to devour us, 
if he were always, and independently of our knowledge, 
or solicitation, kept "hedged" off from us? How could 
we know that we have no power of ourselves, over the 
spiritual foes that beset us within and without, if un- 
known to us these foes were by the Spirit, in a general 
providence, always kept in such subjection that they 
-could not touch us? In other words, how could we 
know ourselves, or God, if He were arbitrarily, and 
without our consciousness, to adopt a general spiritual 
providence that would protect us wholly from every foe, 
and anticipate our every possible need? Would we not, 
inevitably, and most naturalty, under such conditions, 
invest ourselves with the power of self-preservation? 
Would we not be self-righteous? Who, under such con- 
ditions, would likely pray to Him? For what would 
they pray? He is invisible to us, how would we ever 
come to know Him? Who would we thank for gifts 
hestowed without our having seen the need of them, 



76 The Hope of His Calling. 

or having asked them, or knowing whence they came? 
Is it not plain that in the conscious spiritual life is 
God's opportunity, by chastenings, and personal deal- 
ing with us, to show Himself to us as a personal 
Father; His great love for us, our ruin without Him, 
our helplessness to contend against the foes arrayed 
against us, the incomprehensible vastness of His bless- 
ings, the exceeding greatness of his power towards us, 
and the immeasurable extent of our obligations to Him; 
thereby creating in us a reciprocal love, and gratitude? 
Let us not forget that "we love Him because He first 
loved us." 

In this life, then, we may, in the main, expect to 
"receive not" if we "ask not." In fact, it is in what 
Ave have been considering that the necessity for prayer 
seems chiefly to consist. It renders personal inter- 
course with the Father indispensable. Prayer is not 
required because the Father is not willing freely, and 
bountifully, and unsolicited by us, to satisfy our needs 
in a general spiritual providence, but that such a course 
would be ruinous to us. It is certain, as we have seen, 
that He does in a degree — as far, doubtless, as it is best 
for us — deal with us in this way. But while he has 
a hedge about us, this hedge may be, and for our good is, 
at times taken away in a degree, so that Satan becomes 
a "thorn in the flesh." The protection of this general 
providence is, no doubt, increased as we come more and 
more to enter a distinctively trust life, in which reli- 
ance on Him becomes habitual and complete, so that 
we realize always that every good and perfect gift 
"cometh down from the Father," and instantly, and 
with the whole heart, look beyond instrumentalities 
employed, and render thanks and gratitude to Him. 



The Spirit's Relations. 77 

Let us not suppose that blessings have been made 
contingent upon the prayer of faith arbitrarily, and 
without necessity; nor yet that to let God know our 
needs forms any part of this necessity. I can under- 
stand how the child of an earthly parent, if it were 
hungry, might have to make its wants known in prayer, 
as otherwise the parent might not discover the fact. 
But this cannot be true of our Father in heaven, for 
He "knoweth what things ye have need of before ye 
ask Him." 1 He that hath numbered the hairs of our 
heads, and without whose notice even a sparrow can- 
not fall to the ground, needs not to be informed of our 
wants. Neither is it any part of this necessity to make 
Him willing to bless us. Nothing could be further 
from the truth than to suppose that indifference to our 
needs has anything to do with the necessity for prayer. 
Such a thought would be degrading to God as our 
Father. I used to wonder why I should pray at all. 
I was told God was my father, that all things were His, 
that He loved me, and knew my wants before I told 
Him, and so I wondered why I should have to ask any- 
thing at all of Him. I had a kind and thoughtful 
earthly father, and I did not have to plead with him 
for what he knew I needed. He anticipated my ordi- 
nary wants, and supplied them. He did not wait for 
me to come to him and plead with tears and entreaty, 
before he would bless me. I can understand how a 
poor beggar might lift a pitiful face, and in tones of 
entreaty beseech help from a stranger, whom he might 
suppose cared nothing for him, if, perchance, he might 
thus touch his heart and obtain help. I can see how 

x Matt. vi. 8. 



78 The Hope of His Calling. 

the vassal of a heartless tyrant might, with anguish 
of soul, beseech a cruel master for mercy, in the hope 
that he might find some spring of compassion. But 
that anything like this could be true of him who "is 
love/' and who is in a very real and a very personal 
sense our Father, is beyond belief. "If ye, then, be- 
ing evil, know how to give good gifts unto your chil- 
dren, how much more shall your Father which is in 
heaven give good things to them that ask Him." * 

There is a real reason for prayer — a necessity for it — 
one that honors God as a Father. He is invisible to 
us. We cannot see His hand by an eye of sense as we 
can that of an earthly father, and so if He adopted a 
complete general providence with us, such as a visible 
earthly father might safely employ, anticipating all our 
wants, and supplying them without regard to prayer 
by us, we could never know Him, nor our own need 
of, and obligation to Him. 

Let me, if I can, illustrate what I mean. Suppose 
that for political reasons the Czar of Eussia should 
exile a wealthy Christian subject to Siberia. The pris- 
oner has a little son for whom he feels an intense 
fatherly love, and who is decreed to remain behind. 
His property is not confiscated, but is taken in charge 
by the government, and will be paid out through its 
own agents on order of the prisoner, but not in his 
name, nor as coming from him. Others may write to 
him, but he is allowed to write to no one. Now, above 
all things, he wants his son to know his love and father- 
hood. So he leaves a letter for its comfort and help. 
He says, "My child, I leave you in the midst of ene- 



x Matt. vii. 11. 



The Spirit's Relations. 79 

mies. If they have hated me, be sure they will not 
love you. If they have persecuted and cast me out, you 
may know they feel the same ill-will towards you. 
Their friendship is 'enmity against me/ I am your 
father who really loves and cares for you. You will 
not see me by an eye of sense, but be sure I will not 
for a moment forget you. I will be acquainted with 
your state and needs. I will care for you. If you need 
anything, write me for it, and I will give it. to you. But 
I will expect you to see my hand in these blessings 
which I will have to bestow upon you through instru- 
mentalities. If you fail to do this, I will withhold my 
favor till you come to seek my help with such faith 
that, when bestowed upon you, you will know where 
it comes from. Ask, and you shall receive. Ask 
freely. You cannot impoverish me, and my delight is 
to bless you. If, however, you should at any time find 
yourself apparently forsaken of me, do not suppose I 
have ceased to love you, but understand by this that I 
am chastening you for your unbelief, your want of 
trust, and return to me with unwavering faith and I 
will bless you." 

With this message left behind, he is thrust out of 
the country. He must deal with the child according 
to its capacity and the peculiar circumstances of the 
case. It knows comparatively nothing of his father- 
hood and love. This he must teach it by personal 
dealings with it, as, being invisible, he can in no other 
way make it known to him. He longs to satisfy fully 
all its necessary wants, but finds that blessings given 
unsolicited as by general providence, through the hands 
of others, and not in his name, are taken as matter 
of course by him, without a thought beyond the in- 



.So The Hope of His Calling. 

-strumentalities employed as to whence they come, or 
•an expression of gratitude to him as the real author 
of them. So he says, "I must have personal dealings 
with my son if I would be seen by him. He thinks 
the blessings I bestow upon him are acts of kindness 
on the part of those only whom I employ to bestow 
them. I cannot see his heart thus divorced from me. 
I must withhold them from him till he sees his mis- 
take and is forced to come to me for them, then he 
will give my love, and not theirs, credit for them." 
Suddenly, and unexpectedly to the child, there comes 
a reverse in his fortunes. He finds himself in sore 
♦distress and want. Old friends have forsaken him. 
He turns to the right hand and to the left for help, and 
finds none. He puts forth his utmost efforts, but all 
fail, and it seems that he is about to perish. At last, 
in this extremity, he thinks of his father and the scroll, 
.and is astonished to find his condition therein precisely 
described, and also gracious promises of help. So he 
;says, "I will just carry this matter straight to my 
father. It is he who has been blessing me, and I 
knew it not. I have been blind and unfaithful. I 
wall now open my heart to him, and he will help me." 
Then come deliverance and joy and thanksgiving. 
"Then for the first time he begins to see in truth and 
fullness, that his father has a personal love and care 
for him. Then will he begin, as never before, to love 
•and really trust him. 

Is it not somewhat so with our heavenly Father and 
His children? We are no doubt suffered to go spir- 
itually hungry and destitute because if He anticipated 
our wants and gave us all we need without our asking 
and trusting Him for it, we would not understand it, 



The Spirit's Relations. 8i 

and would give him no credit or thanks. And so He 
cannot do it; and often the last thing with us in trouble 
and need is, to go to Him with real faith, such as 
He can honor. He wants to bless us all the time. 
He is never indifferent. He knows our necessities. 
But we do not let Him bless us. In the conscious spir- 
itual life, as we have seen, He recognizes our individu- 
ality. He deals with us as intelligent, rational children. 
He expects us to recognize and look to Him for bless- 
ing and protection as a child would look to an earthly 
parent. He regards our thoughts and wills. It is 
rational, conscious life with us. We are expected to 
become acquainted with Him. He wills to "manifest 
Himself to us/' Of course then, He cannot be expected 
to deal with us in this phase of spiritual life, arbitrarily 
as He must do in the gift and preservation of the 
abstract life, or "new man." But for the gift by Him 
of the abstract life, or "new man," the conscious spir- 
itual life would not be possible. In the former He im- 
parts the endowments and forces that are to be exer- 
cised by us in the latter. He works in us "both to will 
and to do of His good pleasure" x — "to will" as an en- 
dowment of the abstract life — "to do" in the endue- 
ment of power that accompanies sanctification of the 
conscious life. The former is given independently of 
our volition — the latter at our solicitation. He works 
both, truly, but under different conditions, having re- 
gard to our nature and needs in each. He can as cer- 
tainly give us the one as the other, and we are as literally 
dependent upon Him for the one as the other. But 
in bestowing the gift of power to "do" His will He 



1 Phil. ii. 13. 
6 



82 



Thk Hops of His Caujng. 



recognizes the spiritual consciousness involved in the 
abstract life given, and so expects us to look to Him, 
and trust Him for it. If we allow Him to do so, by 
looking to Him through prayer and unwavering faith, 
He will give it to us; but if we look to ourselves for 
it, if we would be "perfect by the flesh," He will let 
us look to ourselves, and seek perfection by the "flesh" 
till we become satisfied that we cannot in that way 
obtain it, as will more fully appear in the next chapter. 



THE CARNAL STATE. 

God's dealings with us in temporal and visible things,, 
are no more certain, and His chastenings in material 
providence are no more real, than they are in His. 
spiritual providence. The former exposes to physical 
want; the latter involves spiritual destitution, and, in- 
cidentally, the domination of spiritual foes over us,, 
since left to ourselves we are without power. Positive: 
help must be had all the time in order to "walk."' 
Hence to be left alone is necessarily to be under the^ 
dominion of evil. The withholding of help therefore- 
means chastening. It means carnality. It means; 
trouble, deep and terrible. It leaves us unholy in out- 
ward life, and impotent in service. And yet, as has; 
been said, the new nature given us — the love shed: 
abroad in the heart — the righteous will of the "new 
man," impels us to persist most earnestly in trying,, 
however ineffectually, to overcome all sin, and do all 
known good. Though it means nothing but failure, 
wretched, heart-sickening failure, yet we are no weaker, 
or worse, after we fail than we were before, so far as 
the nature and loyalty of the soul are concerned. We 
have failed because we tried to do what we had not the 
power to do. And yet it is what we feel called to do, 
and are conscious we should do. Now we are called to 
do it, and feel we must do it, because there is a way 
in which we can do it. But that way is not the self 
way, and this we have failed to see and appreciate. 
And so knowing we are called to holiness, and being 
(83) 



84 The Hope of His Calling. 

by our own new nature impelled to seek it, we try 
again and again, and in bitterness of soul, mourn over, 
and repent repeated failures. We simply do not "walk 
by the Spirit." We are "babes." We do not under- 
stand the laws of our own life, or the source of power 
and victory. And so we must be taught. We must, 
it seems, be left in some instances, to exhaust all the 
resources of self, and sink down beneath the most 
bitter and grinding oppression of Satan, until we are 
forced to see in the extremity of despair that we are 
helpless; that if there is to be any victory for us it 
must be a given victory. In the school of experience, 
under God's special providence and fatherly chasten- 
ings, we must be taught the impotency of self. To this 
end He withdraws His protecting hand in a degree from 
us, He lifts the "hedge" and lets Satan to us, that 
~we may find out in a way that will satisfy us that 
ive are incapable of taking care of ourselves. Some- 
times it takes a long time, and the horrors through 
which we pass before we will see the truth are ter- 
rible. They are exceedingly "grievous" to us at the 
time, but afterwards they bring forth the peaceable 
fruits of righteousness to them that are exercised there- 
by. They bring us to our Father. 

Can we not see how, in such a life, a true, and wholly 
sanctified, but helpless, and spiritually ignorant soul, 
a "babe in Christ" — undeformed, and perfect in nature, 
but undeveloped, and beset by all the foes of holiness 
and of God, may find itself in a long and painful 
process of training and development — a state of im- 
potency, and hence of carnality — in which it must, 
by bitter experience, be brought to see the source of 
victory. In this way only, in too many instances, may 



Thk Carnal State. 85 

it be expected to "grow in grace and the knowledge 
of God." What the carnal Christian needs, therefore, 
is not a new nature, not a recleansing of the soul, but 
rather to "know what is the hope of His calling, and 
what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us- 
ward who believe," and faith to enter through His 
exceeding great power, into the full realization of this 
hope, which is, victorious life. The heart is right. The 
desire, the will, is right. But the conscious life is 
barren, and carnal because we are impotent. It is 
empty of fruit because we do not "abide in the vine." 
It is tossed and troubled because the soul is not stayed 
on God. Why all this protracted wretchedness? Be- 
cause we are, sometimes, so very hard to teach. We 
think we can do something, and refuse to believe any- 
thing else until in utter desperation we are driven to 
see it. Having "begun in the Spirit," 1 instead of walk- 
ing by Him, we think to make ourselves "perfect by 
the flesh," 1 and persist in fruitless trying, failure, and 
carnality. 

Now, let us know for a certainty, that we can never 
deliver ourselves from this carnal state, and that we 
will never be delivered from it till we come to see 
this. It is the adversary who seeks to make us think, 
if we would do our very best, we could keep the law, 
and then makes us afraid to believe we have done our 
best, and so keeps us in endless, and fruitless, self- 
exertion, trying to accomplish the impossible. He 
knows we cannot keep it, and that self-sufficiency will 
keep us from looking by faith to God for deliverance, 
and so learning to "walk by the Spirit" in triumph. 

1 Gal. iii. 3. 



86 The Hope of His Calling. 

Ah, how stoutly does the poor Christian struggle 
against sin in this carnal state — this self-life — this time 
of chastening, and teaching, and how sorrowfully does 
he look upon the results. In most instances we try 
to make up for our shortcomings, and failures, by 
redoubled zeal, and self-sacrifice. If we are preachers, 
we preach and work more, and more earnestly, but not 
less wretchedly. 

Dr. Conyers was a pastor of wonderful zeal. His 
heart was set upon making his life holy, and yet he 
was very unhappy. No one was, perhaps, doing more 
work than he. Visiting and comforting the people, 
providing for the poor, educating the illiterate, attend- 
ing upon the sick and the afflicted, and studying for 
his pulpit; but it gave him no satisfactory rest of soul. 
He was self-condemned — carnal. Yet he could not see 
his impotency. With each failure he laid upon him- 
self greater vows of consecration, and set about more 
arduous labors; still it availed him not. At last in 
the church, upon the communion table of the Lord, 
he wrote and signed a most solemn and stringent vow 
that he would resist Satan and lead a holy life. Yet 
he broke it, suffering additional pangs of remorse and 
penitence. There was no satisfying peace. What more 
could he do? Ah, the truth flashed upon him at last, 
that he could do nothing. That it was not because 
he lacked desire to be good but rather that he was 
without power. He was fighting in his own strength, 
and could not prevail. To will was present with him, 
but how to perform that which was. good he found not. 
Having "begun in the Spirit" he was seeking to make 
himself "perfect by the flesh." He saw as we must 
see, if we would enter victorious life, that the only way 



The Carnal State. 87 

to walk in the conscious spiritual life is "to walk by 
the Spirit." When he turned from self, and saw "the 
exceeding greatness of His power to usward who be- 
lieve," and by faith laid hold of that power as his 
only hope of right living, then he found such heavenly 
peace and rest that service was turned into a rapture. 

Andrew Murray, perhaps the most deeply Spirit 
taught man, whose life is known through the spiritual 
literature of the day, entered as a young minister upon 
most arduous labors. His work involved great burden 
and trial, and he went into it with a mighty zeal and 
earnestness, and yet for fifteen years he was spiritually 
wretched. He was conscious of failure, of carnality, 
and his heart was full of trouble. What was the mat- 
ter? Not that the "inner man" was wrong. He had 
to be taught the impotency of self, and the fact of a 
better way. He was not "walking by the Spirit." And 
yet this was Andrew Murray. When the light came, 
and he saw his mistake — when the "hope of His call- 
ing" began to open to him, there was a mighty rift in 
the cloud that overhung him, and an infilling of power 
and light and hope, and consolation, that increased 
from year to year, as his life became more and more a 
trust life, bringing a marvelous change for which the 
whole religious world has reason to thank God. 

It is vain to seek deliverance in vows and pledges. 
We may vow, and even bind ourselves with oaths, and 
yet we will do no more than we are given power to 
do. If Satan is stronger than we, and sets himself, 
as he certainly does, to defeat us, how can we succeed 
against him unless our lives are filled and sustained 
by a power greater than he? Here is a man who 
undertakes to clear a forest by pulling up the trees. 



88 The Hope op His Calling. 

He pulls at a tree all day and fails, and at night rebukes 
himself most bitterly for not pulling harder. The next 
day he pulls again all day long, but with no greater 
success. With intensified bitterness he reproaches and 
condemns himself for not doing better. And now he 
thinks to settle the matter. He gets out paper, and 
pen and ink, and vows that he will pull up the trees, 
and he swears that he will do it. Yet, we know that 
he will not. He cannot do it. It is not a matter of 
faithfulness in trying. It is matter of ability. Now 
he is quite as able to pull up the trees as we are able 
single handed to overcome Satan and live holy lives. 
We go out and fight him and he takes us up as he 
did poor Peter, and sifts us as he pleases except as 
the Lord restrains him. We say, I will defeat him. 
I will bind myself with a vow, with an oath it may be. 
What good can it do? We must find out at last that 
we are impotent. We have no strength. • If we vow 
let it not be for an exertion of self-help, but of con- 
secration, o'f self-surrender to God. Jonathan Edwards 
says after his thirty-eighth resolution, that after all, 
resolutions are worthless without the grace of God to 
carry them out. This is unquestionably true. Some 
of us have doubtless come to see that we cannot make 
our lives right. Then if we have tried self and failed, 
if we have tried it till the heart is sick, till we see 
no hope in it at all, what then? Are we to conclude 
that there is no life of victory; that we can only 
protest against a carnal state from which there is, in 
this life, no escape? Can it be that no more is involved 
in the hope of His calling? Assuredly there must be 
more. The Father has, in fact, at this point, just 
brought us where we can be blessed. In this despair 



Thk Carnai, State. 89. 

of self-help, we turn to Him. We know we love Him, 
and that we are beloved of Him. We confess our fail- 
ures with exceeding bitterness. We plead for power,, 
for help, for deliverance. We lie very low at His feet. 
We cannot look at the past but with feelings of horror 
and shame. Is there not something better? Must there 
not be a life of peace, and rest, and victory? Our 
thoughts will naturally turn very much upon this line 
now. The time has come when we can be taught. How 
the promises that indicate triumphant life strike the 
attention; how eagerly they are seized upon. If in 
reading the lives and experiences of spiritual men, or 
their writings, such a state of grace is found, it com- 
mands instant attention. The promises of help are 
searched out, and treasured in the heart. The light 
of a better life — the hope of His calling — begins to 
dawn, and with its dawn we reach out for better things. 
"A spirit of wisdom, and revelation in the knowledge 
of God" has been given, showing more and more plainly 
to us "what is the exceeding greatness of His power to 
usward who believe/' There comes a conviction, deep 
and strong, that notwithstanding the impotency of self,, 
there is a life — a given life — that will truly represent 
outwardly our better, our new nature, in its fruits; 
a life by the Spirit. We have no confidence in the 
flesh. We do not take self-help into consideration any 
more. It is not any longer a question with us what 
we can do, so much as, what Christ wills to do in us. 
And as we from day to day cease from our own works, 
and yield ourselves up to God, trusting to Him for all 
things, we begin to enter into rest and heavenly peace, 
and to move out, in the power of the Spirit, and with 
a hitherto unknown joy, confidence, and victory, after 



90 The Hope of His Calling. 

holiness of "walk." This is anointed life. As we be- 
come spiritual, that is, as we come more and more "to 
walk by the Spirit/' we, of course, become less and less 
carnal. "The outward man perisheth, but the inward 
man is renewed day by day." This is the only Christ 
life possible to vis. There is, and can be no rest, nor 
victory in the self -life. One ceases from his own works 
when the enters into rest, as God ceased from His. 1 
Let us cease from our own works then, that God may 
work mightily in us. Let us lose our own lives that 
Christ may live in us; and this we must do, before we 
can escape from the carnal state of weakness and failure, 
and find in fullness, the life of rest and triumph. 

1 Heb. iv. 10. 



THE ANOINTED LIFE. 

We have considered somewhat in detail, the work 
of the Spirit in the creation and preservation of ab- 
stract, or involuntary, spiritual life in the "inner man;" 
and also the fact that there is in contradistinction to 
this life, another, and very different one, which we have 
called conscious spiritual life; and tried to show the 
•distinguishing characteristics of each; in which we have 
seen that in the former, life is arbitrarily given and 
preserved by the Spirit, while at the same time the 
powers of the soul itself are not thereby increased, nor 
its helplessness in any degree removed, its nature only 
Toeing perfected; and hence, that the true Christian 
may, notwithstanding this gracious work of the Spirit 
in the "inner man," by which the nature is kept holy, 
he, at the same time, left, so far as the outward con- 
scious spiritual life or "walk" is concerned, in a sort 
of carnal state, through the domination of evil forces 
that assail him, in which he wills to do good, but finds 
himself without power to perform it. In this connec- 
tion we have also incidentally discussed the fact of a 
possible deliverance from this carnal state, and pointed 
out the power by which this deliverance is to be 
obtained, and how. We come now to consider what may 
be appropriately termed, The Anointed Life — sancti- 
iication of conscious life, or, "walk." We are told that 
Jesus was "full of the Holy Ghost." It was not with 
Him an occasional, or, interrupted state. To be full 
•of the Holy Ghost is to be possessed of God. It does 
not involve the inner, or abstract life only, but the 

(91) 



92 The Hope of His Calling. 

conscious outward life, as well. In the former it pre- 
serves holiness of nature. In the latter, it shows forth 
this holy nature outwardly in good works. It is chiefly 
in its relations to the conscious outward life that we 
see the work of the Spirit in others. His work in the 
creation and preservation of abstract spiritual life, is 
not outwardly visible, of course, and can be known only 
to the consciousness of the individual, but the outward 
life shines. It is seen. "God anointed Jesus of Naza- 
reth with the Holy Ghost and with power; who went 
about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed 
of the devil: for God was with him." 1 Here was a work 
visible to all. It was open, outward, in its manifesta- 
tion. His soul was always holy and perfect in nature, 
but He needed the anointing of the Holy Ghost for 
power, that this holy inner life might be able uninter- 
ruptedly, and perfectly, to do the works of God to which 
He was consecrated, and set apart. He was to contend 
against all the foes of God, and to manifest, truly, and 
fully in His outward walk, the will and life of God 
within Him, and so, He needed to be full of the Holy 
Ghost, anointed with power. Hence could He well 
say to the people if they believed not Him, to believe 
the works that He did. They spake. They bore wit- 
ness that could not be gainsaid. Whence were these 
works? They were not His. They were not human.. 
Whence were they but by the Father? 

It Avas not in the working of miracles and wonders 
only that this anointing was needed. It touched every 
moment of His days and nights, every thought of the 
mind, every feeling of the soul, every word, of the lips„ 

1 Acts x. 38. 



The Anointed Life. 93 

every act of His life. And what was this anointing 
but the Holy Ghost Himself. "God was with Him." 
He was "full of the Holy Ghost." 

And may, and should not we also, live "anointed" 
lives? I like this term best of all. It is not a transient 
life. "The anointing which ye have received of Him, 
abideth in you." x "He which establisheth us with you 
in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God. 2 It is abiding. 
It iests upon the whole life. We are told of Stephen 
that he. was "full of faith and of the Holy Ghost." 3 
Barnabas was "a good man, and full of the Holy 
Ghost." 4 This was not spoken of particular epochs 
in their lives. It was their spiritual character. And 
so no doubt, might it have been said of many others. 
They "were anointed with the Holy Ghost." We 
are admonished to be "filled with the Spirit." 5 Paul 
prayed that the Ephesians might "be filled with all 
the fullness of God." 6 Indeed the very call of God 
is to a life in the Spirit — to an "anointed" life. In the 
fullness of such a life there can be no failure, no want 
of power, no want of victory. "Walk in the Spirit," or, 
as the revised version has it, "walk by the Spirit," 
"and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh." 7 We 
are not to walk in the light of the Spirit only. We 
are to walk by his power. And not partly by His 
power, but altogether by His power. We can walk 
in no other way. So long as we try to do so, as we 
have elsewhere seen, we will remain "babes" and "babes" 
cannot walk. The great trouble with us is, in being 
able to "walk." That belongs to conscious life, and 



z l John ii. 27. 2 2 Cor. i. 21. 3 Acts vi. 5. *Acts "■ 24 « 
sEph. v. 18. 6 Eph. iii. 19. 7 Gal. v. 15. 



94 The Hopk of His Calling. 

must be consciously sought, and trusted for. We may- 
have perfect abstract spiritual life, and yet not be able 
to "go about doing good, and healing those that are 
oppressed of the devil." Whereas we ought to minister 
to others, we may be such as have need to be ministered 
unto. 

Jesus lived His outward, as well as His inward life, 
by the power of God. He spake the words God gave 
Him. He followed the will of God. He worked the 
works of God. He did all by the power of God. His 
was truly and entirely a given life. And the servant 
is not above his Master. It was no more a given life 
in His case than it must be in ours. Neither, on the 
other hand, was this life any more certainly given Him 
than it will, under right conditions, be given unto 
us. He that is perfect shall be as his Master. He, in- 
deed, as a man, had a fullness of the Spirit that none 
had had before Him. But is it true that none were 
to have it in like fullness after Him? "He that be- 
lieveth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; 
and greater works than these shall ye do; because I 
go unto My Father." 1 This evidently referred to the 
coming of the Holy Ghost. He was about to inaugurate 
a new and much more powerful and glorious dispen- 
sation of the grace of God than had ever been seen on 
the earth before. 

Just as He was anointed with "the Holy Ghost, 
and with power," even so may we be anointed by the 
same Spirit, and with the same power. And if He, 
with His perfect soul, perfect by creation, had to have 
this anointing, if He could do nothing without it; if 

1 John xiv. 12. 



The; Anointed 1/lee. 95 

the life of good works He lived was strictly and wholly 
a given life, so that He could say, "The Father that 
dwelleth in me,, He doeth the works," x how can we 
hope "to walk even as He walked/' except by the same 
anointing? And to what else are we called? He 
walked by the Spirit. And so it must be with us. 
It is the same life. It is "in His steps." 

The anointed life, then, is a given life. "It is God 
which worketh in you both to will and to do of His 
good pleasure." 2 "To will" — in the creation of the 
abstract life; "to do" — in the power of the Spirit in 
the conscious life, through voluntary self-surrender and 
trust on our part. It is He only that can "make you 
perfect in every good work to do His will, working 
in you that which is well pleasing in His sight, through 
Jesus Christ." 3 And so has it literally proven in the 
experience of His people. It was declared to be so 
with Paul and Barnabas, who, when the multitude kept 
silence, and gave audience, declared, "what miracles 
and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by 
them." 4 And again, when Paul had saluted his breth- 
ren, "he declared particularly what things God had 
wrought among the Gentiles by his ministry." 5 Who 
of us has not viewed with wonder and admiration, the 
life and ministry of Paul. And yet, in an important 
and real sense, it was not a human life. His mighty 
works by the Spirit were no more human than were 
the works of Christ. And just as Jesus declared that 
His life was not in this respect a human life, so Paul, 
also, declares the same .of his. It was a given life. In 



1 John xiv. 10. 2 Phil. ii. 13. 3 Heb. xiii. 21. * Acts xv. 12. 
5 Acts xxi. 19. 



-96 The Hope of His Calling. 

relating the power and fruitfulness of his ministry 
he does not say, Behold what wonderful things I have 
done for God. Nay, verily. He says, Behold what 
God hath done by me. True, in a sense, I worked 
more abundantly than they all, "yet not I, but the 
grace of God which was with me." 1 It was not a 
human life. It was in its outward manifestation, es- 
sentially, and in fact, a divine life. It was God using 
an instrumentality, rational to be sure, but wholly, and 
.gladly yielded up to Him, in doing His own will, and 
•carrying out His own purposes. 

And this is the spiritual, or, anointed life. Every 
life will not of course be like his, in what the Spirit 
does through ij:, as that is matter of His own will. 
He may not work miracles, or other marvelous things 
through us, as He did through Him, but He will as 
truly possess and use us. That is the measure of what 
He is doing through His people to-day. So far as 
they honor Him, and yield themselves up to Him, sur- 
rendering self-will, and trusting Him wholly, so far He 
takes possession of them, and does His own works by 
them. It is a given life — wholly given. It was so 
with the humanity of Jesus. It cannot be less so with 
us. If He did nothing, and could do nothing of Him- 
yself, we certainly cannot do more. If we were "full of 
the Holy Ghost" we would lead holy, heavenly lives. 
We would not fulfill the lust of the flesh if we "walked 
by the Spirit," because we would not then be in the 
flesh — that is, in the power of the flesh, but in the 
Spirit — that is, in the power of the Spirit — so that 
while the flesh might lust against the Spirit, in its 

1 1 Cor. xv. 10. 



The Anointed I,ife. 97 

endeavors to reach and control us, the Spirit would 
lust back mightily, and triumphantly against the flesh, 
and shield and protect us. Sin would not have domin- 
ion over us, because we would no longer be under the 
law — that is, under the power of the law, but under 
grace — that is, under the mighty power of the "Spirit 
of grace" in us, and giving us the victory. Sin can 
reign no longer unless it be more mighty than God, 
for whereas it did once reign unto death, the "Spirit 
of grace" has now undertaken to reign unto life. The 
foes of God can trample upon the life no more. It 
finds itself enveloped, and in-filled — anointed, with the 
Holy Ghost, and with power, before whom all the foes 
of holiness must yield. 

And now I feel that we have come to the heart of 
our discussion. In the gift of the Holy Ghost in His 
fullness seems to me to be involved all the possibilities 
of the grace of God, for as "the Spirit of grace" — the 
administrator of the dispensation of grace, He can do 
for us exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think. 
In Him is all the fullness of blessing that any soul 
can ever require. 

Is not this exactly "The Hope of His Calling?" Is 
it not the full fruition of "the promise of the Father;" 
and was it not "unto all that are afar off, even to as 
many as the Lord our God may call?" What was the 
occasion of these gracious words being spoken? The 
mighty outpouring of the Holy Ghost on the day of 
Pentecost. While men marveled in amazement and 
wonder at the power of His presence and gifts, Peter 
told them that this was "the promise of the Father;" 
that it was not for the few, but for all; not to those 
of the present generation alone, but to their children; 
7 



98 The Hope of His Cai^ing. 

and not to their children only, but to all that are 
afar off, even to as many as the Lord our God may 
''call." 1 As therefore, every one whom the Lord our 
God "calls," is called to this triumphant Holy Ghost 
life, may we not justly say, it is distinctively, "The 
hope of His calling" ? 

And now let us inquire somewhat more definitely, 
what this "Promise of the Father" is. We are not un- 
mindful of the fact that spiritual people differ in their 
views at this point. But we do not feel it our duty 
to discuss, or, classify the many theories and names 
that have been suggested by different ones in connec- 
tion with the wonderful out-pouring of the Holy Ghost 
at Pentecost. Where there is room for more names 
than one, where more are given in the scriptures, by 
which to designate a great fact in the experience of a 
Christian, I am not so much concerned about the name 
as I am about the fact itself. 

By whatever name we may most properly charac- 
terize this event of such transcendent importance in 
God's dealings with the Christian, it yet certainly re- 
mains true that the precise blessing which fell on 
the hundred and twenty on the day of Pentacost, was 
a fulfillment of "the promise of the Father," and that 
it was to as "many as the Lord our God may call" in 
all His future dealings with the race. Here is the 
truth of overshadowing prominence: this Messing, the 
immediate fruits of which were so very wonderful, is 
the exact blessing that the Father has promised to every 
one whom He calls to salvation. Whatever was in- 
volved in it is for all saints. 

1 Acts ii. 39. 



The Anointed Life. 99 

The blessing which constitutes the "promise of the 
Father/ 7 is not, as it appears to us, best designated by 
terms which refer to its effects, or manifested works 
in us. We think the distinctive "promise of the 
Father/' was the "gift of the Holy Ghost" Himself 
as the "Comforter" of the Christian, and the personal 
administrator of the new dispensation of the grace of 
God. Let us examine the scriptures and see if we can. 
whether this be true. Jesus, after His resurrection., 
addressing the disciples, commanded them to wait at 
Jerusalem "for the promise of the Father, which, saith 
He, ye have heard of me." 1 Now what had He said 
to them in the past concerning this great coming event? 
He had talked to them freely about it. He had told 
them what it was to be. And what was that? "I 
will pray the Father, and He shall give you another 
comforter, that He may abide with you forever." 2 "Ye 
know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be 
in you." 3 "The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost,, 
whom the Father will send in my name." * "When the 
Comforter is come, . . . the Spirit of truth, which pro- 
ceedeth from the Father." 5 

These words of Jesus seem to leave no room to doubt 
that He spake of the gift by the Father of the Holy 
Ghost Himself, in the office of the Comforter, as "the 
promise of the Father." He was to be "given." He 
was then "with them." He was to be "in them." They 
were to "receive" Him. He was to "abide in them 
forever." And so the apostles understood. Paul 
speaking of the same gift says, "The Holy Ghost which 



x Actsi. 4. 2 John xiv. 16. 3 John xiv. 17. 4 John xiv. 26. 
s John xv. 26. 



ioo Thk Hope of His Calling. 

is given unto us." 1 And again he says, "that Holy 
Spirit of promise." 2 We are told that Christ, being 
by the right hand of God exalted, "received of the 
Father the promise of the Holy Ghost." 3 "The Holy 
Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey 
Him." 4 From, which it is evident both Jesus and the 
apostles referred to the great event of Pentecost, not 
as being an effect to be produced in the disciples, not 
as any new change of moral nature to be experienced 
by them, but as the coming of the Holy Ghost as an 
abiding Comforter. It is of no small moment to know 
certainly how this is, as it is a key to the meaning 
of much scripture bearing upon the anointed life. 
Then let us see what is unmistakable from these texts. 

1. Jesus talked to the disciples of "the promise of 
the Father," the event of Pentecost, the baptism fore- 
told by John the Baptist, when He told them of the 
.coming of the Holy Ghost, as the Comforter. 

2. The promise of the Father was then with them. 
If so could it have been a special change of moral 
nature yet to be wrought in them? 

3. The promise of the Father was to be fulfilled in 
the gift of a person. "He" was to be "in them." "He" 
was to come in a certain office as "Comforter." Now 
•could we justifiably substitute the less for the greater, 
make the effect comprehend the cause, include the ge- 
nus under the species? If the Holy Ghost, as the Com- 
forter, was first bestowed at Pentecost, that must have 
been distinctively the gift of that occasion. Special 
:gifts were subordinate to this, and comprehended under 
it, as they were, in fact, bestowed by the Comforter 



* Rom. v. 5. 2 Eph. i. 13. ' Acts ii. 33. * Acts v. 32. 



The Anointed I<ife. ioi 

Himself. "They were all filled with the Holy Ghost, 
and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit 
gave them utterance." x That is, "the Spirit" which 
they had then first received as the Comforter, at once 
began His marvelous office work by the impartation 
of this miraculous power. The promise of the Father, 
then, was not a specific change to be wrought in the 
moral nature of the disciples on this occasion; it was 
not a single work of the Spirit in them, nor a gift 
by the Spirit, nor any number of specific gifts, but the 
Holy Ghost Himself, as the abiding Comforter, "the 
Spirit of grace," who is able of Himself, according to 
the working of His mighty power in us, to bring to 
our aid, if need be, all the resources of His "throne 
of grace." 

1 Acts ii. 4. 



PENTECOST AND SANCTIFICATION. 

We come now to consider somewhat more definitely, 
that the gift of the Holy Ghost, the very gift of Pente- 
cost, and the fulfillment of the promise of the Father, 
does not necessarily imply immediate and uninterrupted 
sanctification of outward conscious life, but rather the 
reception by us of the Sanctifier; that notwithstanding 
the power wrought by the Spirit in the disciples on 
that occasion, it does not necessarily follow that they 
received entire sanctification. Let us examine the scrip- 
tures on this question. 

Take the church at Rome. Undoubtedly they had 
received the Holy Ghost before Paul's letter was written 
to them. The whole tone of the letter shows this, but 
that no doubt may remain, the fact is expressly stated. 
'The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the 
Holy Ghost, which is given unto us." 1 "Ye have re- 
ceived the Spirit of adoption, wherebv we cry, Abba, 
Father." 2 And yet they were not wholly sanctified. 
The Sanctifier was in them, and they could have 
"walked" by Him in entire sanctification, but they did 
not do it. And why? They were not wholly yielded 
up to Him. They had not reached the point of entire 
consecration, and of unwavering faith in Him as the 
Sanctifier of their outward conscious lives. This fact 
was recognized and deplored by the apostle. It led 
him to pen that most familiar and powerful of all the 



Kom. v. 5. 9 Eom. viii. 15. 
(102) 



Pentecost and Sanctification. 103 

texts of the Bible exhorting to entire consecration. "I 
beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, 
that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, 
acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." x 
This they had not done, and the failure to do so was, 
of course, fatal to all hopes of entire sanctification. They 
could not "walk by the Spirit" unless they were yielded 
up to the Spirit. They had received the gift of the 
Holy Ghost, the Comforter, whose coming was the 
great event of Pentecost, but they had not allowed Him 
to wholly sanctify them. 

And what shall we say of the Corinthians? Who 
were they? We are told that in the formation of this 
church, Paul spent a year and a half laboring in Corinth, 
preaching and teaching the gospel. It was established 
and grew up under his personal ministry. Did he win 
these people to Christ, and leave them at the end of 
eighteen months personal ministering without the gift 
of the Holy Ghost, when by the laying on of hands he 
had the power to bestow it, as he did upon the Ephe- 
sians? It is incredible. But we are not left to con- 
jecture. We are told by him that they did, in fact 
and truth, have the Holy Ghost. Jesus before His 
death, speaking to the disciples of the promised coming 
of the Comforter after His death, said, "He is with you, 
and shall be in you." He was a person, and was coming 
to abide in them as in a temple forever. In exact con- 
formity to this assurance the apostle says to the Corin- 
thians, "Know ye not that your body is the temple of 
the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of 
God?" 2 And again, "He which establisheth us with 



*Rom. xii. 1. 9 1 Cor. vi. 19. 



104 The Hope of His Calling. 

you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; who hath 
also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in 
our hearts." x Was Pentecost yet to come in the ex- 
perience of these disciples? There can be but one 
scriptural answer. It was not. Am I reminded that 
mighty gifts were bestowed in manifestation of the 
Spirit's advent at Pentecost? What were these mani- 
festations? 2)id they speak in unknown tongues? So 
did these. 2 Did they have the spirit of revelations? 
So did these. 2 Did they prophesy? So did the Corin- 
thians. 3 And what at last, were the outward works 
of the Holy Ghost through the disciples at Pentecost 
but "manifestations" only of the Spirit Himself? Was 
it not as literally true of Him in the beginning, as it 
was when Paul wrote to the Corinthians, that in His 
administration there were diversities of gifts? They 
were simply filled with the Spirit, and He used them. 
He gave them specific gifts as it served His purposes, 
just as He did to the Corinthians. "To one is given 
by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word 
of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another faith by 
the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the 
same Spirit; to another the working of miracles; to an- 
other prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to an- 
other divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpreta- 
tion of tongues; but all these worketh that one and the 
self same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He 
will." 4 This is said of the workings of the Spirit in 
the body of Christ, and then he says further on, "Now 
ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular." 5 



1 2 Cor. i. 21, 22. 2 1 Cor. xiv. 26. 3 1 Cor. xiv. 29. 4 1 Cor. 
xii. 8-11. s i Cor. xii. 27. 



Pentecost and Sanctificatio.st. 105 

What is there omitted in ihis list of gifts in the or- 
dinary administration of the general church by the 
Holy Spirit, that characterized Pentecost? As to what 
of these gifts the Corinthians actually had, beyond 
some that are especially mentioned, we cannot know, 
as they were dispensed by the one Spirit that rilled the 
body of Christ, according to His own will and purposes ' r 
but this we do certainly know, they were in that body, 
and had that Spirit, and such gifts from Him as He 
willed; which is, in very truth, all that can be said of 
any other members of His body. 

But notwithstanding all this, they did not have entire- 
sanctification of outward conscious life. On the con- 
trary, the apostle tells us they were "carnal." 1 It was- 
their privilege to "walk by the Spirit" in holiness of 
outward life, but they had not reached a point where 
the}' did so. That they had a degree of outward sanc- 
tification, I doubt not, and yet in the classification of 
Christians, they were not "spiritual" but "carnal," and 
"walked as men." * If all that can come into our lives, 
the fulfillment of Christian perfection, is to be expected 
as an instant result of the gift, and experience of Pen- 
tecost, what shall we say, then, of them? In the face- 
of the scriptures quoted there can be no more doubt 
that they had received the Holy Ghost as the Com- 
forter, than that the hundred and twenty received Him 
on the day of Pentecost. He was not only in them, 
but had bestowed many and great gifts upon them. Yet 
they were "babes," 2 they were "carnal," they walked 
not by the Spirit, but "as men." Pentecost was not 



1 1 Cor. iii. 1, 3, 4. 2 1 Cor. iii. 1. 



io6 The Hope of His Calling. 

ahead of them, but entire sanctification undoubtedly 
was. 

Take the Galatians. That they had received the 
Spirit before Paul's letter was written to them is speci- 
fically declared. He says, "Eeceived ye the Spirit by 
the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are 
je so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now 
made perfect by the flesh?" x Again, "Because ye are 
sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into 
your hearts, crying, Abba, Father/' 2 They had en- 
tered the Pentecostal life, had received the Spirit — had 
begun in Him — and needed nothing more, if they had 
only "walked" by Him. But, alas, this is exactly what 
they have not done. Do they see their imperfections? 
Yes. Are they satisfied with the "carnal" state in which 
they find themselves? No. Are they trying to be "per- 
fect?" Undoubtedly. But they are not trying in the 
right way. They, just as so many have done since, 
failed to see their utter, and entire, dependence upon 
the Spirit for outward perfection of conscious spiritual 
life, as well as for holy "inner" abstract life; and hence, 
were trying to complete perfection by the "flesh," or 
self-works. Of course this, as we have elsewhere seen, 
could mean nothing but failure. And so the apostle 
tells them. "If," says he, "ye bite and devour one 
another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of 
another. This I say then, walk in the Spirit, and ye 
shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh." 3 "If we live in 
the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit." 4 They were 
alive in the Spirit. The soul had been made a "new 
man," created "in righteousness and true holiness," and 



1 Gal. iii. 2, 3. a Gal. iv. 6. 3 Gal. v. 16. * Gal. v. 25. 



Pentecost and Sanctification. 107 

this holy, abstract, spiritual life was perfectly preserved 
in them by the Spirit — they "lived in the Spirit" — but 
they had failed to see that just as they were dependent 
upon the Spirit for this involuntary covenant life, so 
were they equally dependent upon Him for outward 
conscious spiritual life, or, "walk." As truly as they 
were to "live by the Spirit," must they also "walk by 
the Spirit." And if in conscious life they "walk by 
the Spirit," they must be yielded up to the Spirit, they 
must trust in the Spirit, they must cease to try to 
make themselves "perfect by the flesh." What shall we 
then say of them? Not that the gift of Pentecost was 
yet to come, certainly. They had received the Holy 
Ghost, but they did not have entire sanctification. 
They had not given Him a chance to sanctify them. 
Thejr did not need a new change of moral nature, but 
rather to yield up to Him the nature already given, 
that by Him they might have power to live outwardly 
the holy nature of the given inner life. 

Once more, let us look at the Thessalonians. Paul 
,says to them, "God, who hath also given unto us His 
Holy Spirit." x The revised version renders it, "God 
who giveth His Holy Spirit unto you." And again, 
"Quench not the Spirit." 2 Undoubtedly they had the 
Holy Spirit. He was given unto them of God. It was 
the fulfillment to them of His great promise. And yet 
they were not wholly sanctified. While scripture is, in 
general, applicable to all Christians, it must, in an 
especial sense, be applicable to those to whom it is 
directly spoken. Paul says to these Thessalonians, "The 



1 1 Thess. iv. 8. 2 1 Thess. v. 19. 



108 The Hope of His Calling. 

very God of peace sanctify you wholly/' . . . "Faith- 
ful is He that calleth you, who also will do it." x 

Let us very carefully consider, for a moment, the 
remarkable facts here revealed. God had given His 
Holy Spirit to these disciples. It was the Pentecost in 
their lives when they received Him. And yet the 
apostle offers a special prayer for their entire sancti- 
fication, intimating clearly that it is embraced in the 
hope of God's calling to them, and that as He is faith- 
ful He will surely do all He has undertaken in their 
behalf. It shows that sanctincation is not a human 
attainment. It must be given. It was something they 
could no more do for themselves than they could create 
their souls anew "in righteousness and true holiness." 
Yet it had not up to this time been done for them. 
Of course there must have been some important reason 
why it was not done. It was to this very end they 
were called. Their own happiness, and their useful- 
ness to the church, depended largely upon it. God 
wanted them to have it. The apostle, who had him- 
self received it, saw its unspeakable importance to them, 
was exceedingly anxious it might be done for them, 
and to this end fervently prayed in their behalf. Now 
as I said, there was a reason for this delay, a necessity 
for it. It is inconsistent with our ideas of God that 
He would arbitrarily withhold from His children the 
very blessing they most need, the one to which they are 
expressly called, and the one it most pleases Him to 
impart to them. He was able, willing, ready and wait- 
ing to sanctify them wholly. But there were conditions 
that must be met before it could be done. Just as the 



1 1 Thess. v. 23, 24. 



Pentecost and Sanctification. 109 

sinner must by faith take Christ as a personal Savior, 
before the soul can be sanctified in moral nature, or 
recreated "in righteousness and true holiness/' so we, 
after this first sanctification, not as sinners but "as those 
who are alive from the dead" "must yield ourselves unto 
God" 1 as matter of intelligent volition; "present our 
bodies a living sacrifice unto Him," 2 and trust Him 
for sanctification of conscious spiritual life, or "walk," 
also, before it will be given us. These Thessalonians 
had, of course, received this first sanctification. Paul 
says in his letter to them, "God, . . . hath chosen 
you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit 
and belief of the truth." 3 This sanctification was given 
them the instant they believed. Through it they were 
" chosen." Peter declares the same truth in general 
when he says of the Christian, "elect through sancti- 
fication." 4 Of course we know the church of the Thes- 
salonians were "elected," or "chosen," and hence had 
this sanctification of moral nature. It was in this sanc- 
tification that the Galatians "began" in the Spirit. It 
was, on the other hand, in attempted sanctification of 
conscious life, or "walk," that they sought to be "per- 
fect by the flesh." Paul does not, therefore, refer to 
sanctification of soul when he prays that these disciples 
may be wholly sanctified, as though it needed a further 
change of moral nature, but to the "walk." In holiness 
of nature they "lived in the Spirit," as did the Gala- 
tians, but like them also, they failed to "walk by the 
Spirit," and hence were not wholly sanctified. 

Bo not these various scriptures, showing the state 
of different churches in the time of the apostles, make 



1 Rom. vi. 13. 2 Pvom. xii. 1. 3 2 Thess. ii. 13. H p e t. i. 2. 



no The; Hope of His Calung. 

plain that "the promise of the Father" was not sanc- 
tification, but rather the Sanctiiier Himself; and that 
while He, as the wonderful and crowning gift of God, 
was to abide in us forever, it did not necessarily follow 
that we would at once enter into entire sanctification, 
but that by His workings in us this would be accom- 
plished as rapidly as our lives are yielded up to Him, 
and He is recognized and trusted in by us, so that we 
consciously "walk by Him?" The fact that He bestowed 
miraculous gifts upon the disciples at Pentecost does 
not show that they were wholly sanctified, as is seen 
in the case of the Corinthians. Besides, it is nowhere 
stated that the hundred and twenty were wholly sanc- 
tified at that time. Indeed, there is every probability 
that they were not. When, in the earliest days of the 
church, deacons were to be appointed, they were told 
to find men who were "full of the Holy Ghost." 1 
Evidently all were not. Peter himself, who should not 
have grown weaker, long afterwards at Antioch, "dis- 
sembled," and "walked not uprightly according to the 
truth of the gospel," 2 and was openly, and severely, 
rebuked by Paul before all, and the scriptures give no 
defense, or extenuation, of his conduct. It was a 
moment of weakness in which he failed "to walk by the 
Spirit." Now if Peter, after having received this gift 
with the rest, and which, let us bear in mind, was to 
abide forever in him, and hence was still in him, never- 
theless, acted thus unsanctified at Antioch, why might- 
he not under the same conditions have done so at any 
other time? And if he who was so mightily filled that 
day was not wholly sanctified at Antioch, why might 



1 Acts vi. 3. 2 Gal. ii. 13, 14. 



Pentkcost and Sanctification. Ill 

not others even at Pentecost have remained partially 
nnsanctified notwithstanding their gifts? Peter had 
not lost the Pentecostal gift. He was doubtless in point 
of personal piety a better man then than he was on 
the day of Pentecost. We cannot suppose he made no 
growth in grace. From these considerations we con- 
clude that entire sanctification was not a necessary and 
immediate result of the outpouring of the Holy Ghost 
on the day of Pentecost. 

At this present day, there is, therefore, never a time 
in the life of the Christian, when he does not have 
"the Spirit in the inner man/' not only as the Sanc- 
tifier of the soul, but also as the Comforter whose com- 
ing was a fulfillment of "the promise of the Father;" 
who only, can sanctify us, and who is ever able, willing 
and waiting to do so; and who does so as rapidly as 
we allow. Just as Paul urged Christians not to seek 
something outside them, but to "walk by the Spirit" 
in them, in whom they "live;" to seek to be "perfect," 
not by the "flesh," but by the power of the same Spirit 
in whom they "begun" spiritual life, so should we un- 
derstand, that the power is in us all the time, and that 
if he does not reign in us, and cause us "to reign in 
life by Jesus Christ," to "walk even as He walked," 
it is because we do not yield ourselves wholly to Him, 
and through faith "walk by Him." 

But if this be so it may be asked what special sig- 
nificance is to be attached to Pentecost as all true be- 
lievers before that time must in some sense have had 
the Spirit. The answer is, it was the advent of the 
"Comforter." In whatever office Christians had had 
the Spirit before that time, they undoubtedly had not 
had Him as the Comforter. He had filled others be^ 
fore this but never as the Comforter. 



ii2 The Hope of His Calling. 

It seems to me that the best explanation of the 
relation of the Spirit to the Christian before and after 
Pentecost, is found in the two kinds of spiritual life 
which we have elsewhere in detail discussed. We must 
.see that sanctification of soul, or the creation "in 
righteousness and true holiness" of the "new man/' is 
distinct from sanctification of the outward conscious 
spiritual life, or "walk." That there is a sanctification 
of the moral nature of the soul — the gift of abstract 
spiritual life — and distinct from this and often widely 
separated from it in point of time, a sanctification also 
of the conscious outward life, or, "walk." 

Now the preservation of the abstract spiritual life 
given in this first sanctification does not involve con- 
scious causation, or the exercise of volition on our part, 
and hence does not depend upon sanctification of out- 
ward life or "walk," for its continued existence in holi- 
ness of nature, but its joy and fruitfulness do. The 
eternal life God gave in Christ will abide in us, though 
the conscious outward life be unsanctified for want of 
power in us, but cannot flow out from us — life, but not 
life "more abundantly." It seems to me that it is in 
the creation, and preservation in holiness of this first 
life, that the Spirit has always been in God's children 
from Adam down. "In righteousness and true holiness" 
it is created in regeneration, and is ever after "kept by 
the power of God" 1 "preserved in Christ Jesus." This 
is a covenant w r ork of the Spirit not dependent upon 
us, and has from the beginning been vouchsafed to 
all in answer to faith in Christ as a personal Savior. 

But since the glorification of Christ, the Spirit has 

x lPet. i 5. 



Pentecost and Sanctification. 113 

"been sent in the new office of "Comforter/' in which 
capacity He deals especially with conscious spiritual 
life, or, "walk/' imbuing with power to live outwardly 
according to the holy nature of the renewed soul, giving 
the mighty, joyous, triumphant, "flowing" life, the 
life "more abundant." This view harmonizes exactly 
with the name Christ gave this office work of the Spirit 
— "The Comforter." The creation and preservation 
of the abstract life does not involve a manifestation of 
the Spirit to our consciousness. We may only know 
that whereas we were once blind, now we see. The 
outward life or "walk," however, is conscious, rational 
life. It can have companionship and communion. In 
it we know the source of favors. In this life the Father 
manifests Himself to us. We spiritually see Him and 
know Him. He comes in and sups with us. We have 
sweet communion with Him. By His wonderful gifts, 
and consolations, we are greatly comforted, and our 
hearts rejoice in the Holy Ghost. We have the Com- 
forter. It is the Pentecost life. 

It is important to keep in mind, however, that to 
have the Holy Ghost, and to be "full of the Holy Ghost," 
are not the same thing. What are we to understand 
then by being "rilled with the Spirit?" Does it have 
reference to the quantity of the Spirit that is given to 
us? How little of that Spirit which fills the universe, 
must in this sense fill us. We are told that in Christ 
"dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily," 1 and 
yet the Father was upon the throne in heaven, and in 
every part of the universe at the same time. I do not 
suppose it is a matter of quantity at all, but rather of 



1 Col. ii. 9. 
8 



ii4 Thk Hope of His Calling. 

asserted power. "If any man have not the Spirit of 
Christ, he is none of His." 1 It does not say if we 
have not some of His Spirit. "Is Christ divided?" 2 
I suppose that wherever God's Spirit is at all, there 
God, in all the fullness of His power, is also. This 
power may not be asserted, but it is there. Where the 
scriptures, therefore, speak of being "filled with the 
Spirit," "full of the Spirit," etc., it seems to have refer- 
ence, not to the quantity of the Spirit in the "inner 
man," but rather to the infusion of the power and life 
of the Spirit already "in the inner man," into our con- 
scious outward lives. It may be for a specific work, or 
occasion, and it may be in giving sanctification. Paul 
prays that the Ephesians may be "strengthened with 
might by the Spirit in the inner man." They had re- 
ceived the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of 
his hands. The Spirit was in the inner man; but they 
were not for that reason necessarily strengthened with 
might by Him. Paul wants them filled with the Spirit 
till, like himself, they can say, "I can do all things 
through Christ which strengtheneth me." 3 Suppose 
the prayer to be literally answered, would not that be 
a "filling" ? and yet the Spirit was already in them. He 
wants the wisdom, and power, of the Spirit to rule in 
them, having them in willing possession, so that they 
may, in His strength and under His guidance, move 
forward boldly, and mightily, in good works, and all 
service, to the glory of God. Is not that it? Full of 
the asserted power of the Spirit, possessed literally and 
gladly by Him. How was it with those who were pos- 
sessed with evil spirits? These spirits carried them 



1 Rom. viii. 9. 2 1 Cor. i. 13. 3 phil. i v . 13. 



Pentecost and Sanctification. 115 

whithersoever they would. They spake with their 
mouths, they used their hands and feet. They pos- 
sessed them. If they could thus hy violence literally 
possess a man so as to use his faculties, why may not 
I, voluntarily, as matter of deliberate volition, acting; 
as a rational being, convinced that it is my highest in- 
terest, my only safety, give myself wholly into the 
power and possession of the Spirit whom I love, and 
whose will I would have done in my life, to be as 
literally controlled and used by Him? And why is not 
such a surrender to, and possession by the Spirit, ac- 
cording to God's word and mercy? It is not coercion.. 
It is not a loss of indivuduality. It is my helpless, 
soul, as matter of choice fleeing from the domination 
of other spirits, and influences, to take refuse in Him. 
What else is it to be "full of the Holy Ghost," to "walk 
by the Spirit?" In what other sense could Paul have 
said, "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me?" 1 
What else was it but the voluntary surrender of self, 
the "presenting of his body a living sacrifice/' losing 
wholly his own will and self-life, that Christ, through 
the Spirit, might possess, and live in him, just as God 
the Father possessed and lived in Him as a man. We 
are members of Christ's spiritual body. His Spirit is 
our spiritual life and power just as truly and literally 
as my spirit is the life of the members of my body. 
It is not a distinct part of my spirit that is the life 
of my hand. It is the one undivided spirit. If it suf- 
fers, the whole life suffers with it. All the powers of 
my being are in union with it so that it can command 
my whole attention and strength. How else is it with 

x Gal. ii. 20. 



n6 The Hope of His Calling. 

Christ's body? We hear Him saying, "Saul, Saul, why 
persecutest thou me?" 1 It was Christ Himself. Hence 
the Spirit of Christ in the fullness of His power is in 
the Christian always, no matter what may be his spir- 
itual state, but it will not always assert itself alike in 
the infusion of strength and spiritual life. The gift 
of Pentecost belongs to this dispensation, and is shared 
by all regenerated persons, however feeble they may 
be; the difference in believers consisting, not in some 
having, and others not having, the Spirit as a Sanctifier, 
but in the degree to which they yield themeselves to 
Him and trust Him that He may sanctify them. All 
have the Spirit in all His power as the Comforter, but 
jsome "walk by the Spirit," and others do not. 

It can hardly be possible, therefore, that Pentecost 
involves another spiritual baptism after regeneration, 
in the sense of perfecting the work of God in the cre- 
ation of the "new man" in regeneration, by changing 
again the moral nature of the soul. What God does, 
is done right at first, and does not need to be patched, 
or made over again. There are no remains of Adamic 
sin in the "new man." He is created since the fall 
and is not tainted by it. In the surrendered life, this 
wonderful life of power, and triumph, and joy, the 
! Spirit does for us exactly what we in the "inner man" 
most desire. In "the inner man" we "delight in the 
law of God," and for this law to be kept by us out- 
wardly as well as inwardly, is just what the soul most 
longs for. We have been in captivity to the flesh; to 
be set free from this captivity is our strongest wish. 
The soul does not need a second time to be changed 

1 Acts ix. 4. 



Pentecost and Sanctification. 117 

in nature, therefore, and it never is so changed. It is 
the outward man of the flesh that has to be dealt with; 
and it is not changed. It is subdued, overcome. And 
so, to be "filled with the Holy Ghost" does not imply 
further change of the moral nature of the sou], but 
definite, entire, voluntary surrender of self, to be wholly 
possessed of, lived in, and used by the Spirit; just as 
Jesus was possessed of, lived in, and used by the 
Father. 

That this full possession of the Spirit, and incidental 
sanctification of conscious life, or "walk," should not 
take place in us arbitrarily and independently of self- 
surrender and trust, on our part, we have, I hope, fully 
shown elsewhere. It would, in that event, leave us 
unconscious of the fact that victory is given, and of 
the source of it; and hence rob God of the gratitude 
and thanksgiving, and praise which a knowledge of 
these things on our part would inspire in us, as the 
conscious beneficiaries of His loving care. It would 
leave us ignorant of our own helplessness and depend- 
ence. It would effectually hide God from us. It would 
leave no spiritual occasion for prayer, and no oppor- 
tunity for the correction and teaching of chastening. 
We could never discover God's Fatherhood and love 
for us, nor have any just conception of our obligations 
to Him. "We can hardly fail, I hope, to see that these 
facts fully, and in a way that honors God as our Father, 
and involves no imperfection in the moral nature of 
the "new man" in us, accounts for the delay of the 
Spirit in taking full possession of many. They have 
not reached a point where He can, with necessary 
recognition of, and regard to, their own volition, do so. 
He has not been looked to for it. There has been no 



n8 The Hope of His Causing. 

' definite and entire surrender of self. He has been 
largely shut out of the conscious life. 

It also accounts for the difference in point of time 
that exists with many between conversion and the 
"enduement" of power. Again it shows how the life 
"more abundant" may be entered at once, where there 
is at the beginning total self-surrender and unwaver- 
ing faith, such as the apostle Paul seems to have had. 
There is no necessary delay to those who are rightly 
informed and rightly trust for it. On the other hand, 
however, there is every reason why there should be 
delay where we are ignorant of its conditions, or act- 
ually disbelieve the fact of such a possible state, and 
must, through God's chastenings and fatherly dealings 
with us, be brought both to see our own impotency 
and the fact of a triumphant life by the Spirit within 
our reach. 

Again, it makes clear, I trust, that it is not a state 
that is necessarily attained instantly; but, that while 
it may be so attained, yet, on the other hand, it may 
be, and often is, a progressive attainment. In the de- 
gree that the life is surrendered and the Spirit trusted, 
will His power be seen in the sanctification of our 
outward lives. There will in most, if not all cases, be 
marked and memorable epochs, in which instant, and 
great light and power, come into the life, giving 
never-to-be-forgotten joy and love to the Father. But 
that may not compass all our need. It may leave the 
outward life but partially conformed to the will of God, 
as was the case with the Corinthians; for in the de- 
gree only that we "walk by the Spirit" will the con- 
scious life be actually sanctified. 



Pentecost and Sanctification. 119 

And now, should we not rejoice at the privilege of 
taking our helpless lives and hiding them securely in 
the mighty triumphant life of Christ through the 
Spirit? Child of God, think what it means to obtain 
such security against the assaults of spiritual foes, and 
of the joys of rich fruitfulness in good works and sweet 
communion with the Holy Spirit. Let us make the 
surrender. Let us give up all, all, to God, that we 
may "be filled with the Spirit," that we may "reign 
in life by Christ Jesus/' that we may enter into rest. 



JESUS LED OF THE SPIRIT* 

In His human personality Jesus was led of the Spirit. 
He was no more able of Himself to direct His life 
than we are to direct our own. He was led. And if 
He was led, how can we hope to get on in His service 
without being led ? "Jesus being full of the Holy- 
Ghost, returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit 
into the wilderness." 1 There is, and can be, no spir- 
itual life without being led of the Spirit. We cannot 
comprehend spiritual things without a given spiritual 
discernment. The natural man receiveth not the 
things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, 
for they are spiritually discerned. As the Spirit is the 
administrator of this dispensation, as the work is His, 
as we are to live a given life by and for Him, surely it 
should be plain to us that this life must be directed 
by Him. 

And so we find it declared, "As many as are led by 
the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." 2 As 
we have seen elsewhere, the "new man" is always led 
by the Spirit, in an important sense, for it perfectly 
serves the law of God. There is, however, another 
sense in which we are to be led of the Spirit, of which 
we would now speak — in conscious outward life or 
"walk." We are not to be unconsciously led in this 
life. Jesus, no doubt, was consciously led into the 



1 Luke iv. 1. 2 Rom. viii. 14. 
(120) 



Jesus L,ed of the Spirit. 121 

wilderness. And so was it with Philip when he was 
sent to the desert to preach to the eunuch. So, also, 
was it with Peter when he was sent to open the 
gospel to the Gentile world at the house of Cornelius. 
So, too, was it with Paul and Barnahas in their min- 
istry. Often their plans had to he abandoned because 
"the Spirit suffered them not/' lie was leading. 

And so it is to-day. His voice is recognized in the 
consciousness of the spiritual. He no more truly led 
His people then than He wills to lead them now. If 
they are not led by Him as fully at this time, it is not 
because He has changed His plan, nor because they 
can go on safely without His guidance, but because 
He is not looked to by them, and trusted sufficiently 
that he may lead; hence, they fall into their own doc- 
trines and ways, and into much hurtful evil. Let us 
not suppose that the Spirit has ceased to consciously 
and literally lead in His service. The spiritual know 
Him. He walks in them. He communes with them. 
He manifests himself to them. He puts the conscious- 
ness of His Fatherhood into their hearts. He reveals 
to them the length and breadth and height and depth 
of the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge. He 
goes before them as a pillar of cloud by day and a 
pillar of fire by night. They follow Him. "He call- 
eth His own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. . . . 
He goeth before them, and the sheep follow Him: for 
they know His voice." 1 

And how is this fact to affect us in outward con- 
scious life? We should cease from dependence upon 
self. If we would be led by the Spirit, we should. 

* John x. 3, 4. 



122 The Hope of His Calling. 

cease to "lean to our own understanding," we should 
be surrendered to the Spirit; we should lay aside our 
own plans and schemes, and trust to the Spirit, and 
wait upon Him for His plans and purposes concern- 
ing us. It is no more a question what we can do, but 
what He wills to do by us. 

We discuss His leading in the work of the ministry 
in a separate chapter, and so desire here to speak of 
it in connection with Christian service in general. 
There is nothing to be done in the furtherance of the 
gospel that somebody is not called to do, or rather 
that some one would not be called to do if we were- 
surrendered up to Him. He is the administrator of 
the dispensation, and takes personal superintendence 
of every line and character of Christian work. Neither 
is there any truly Christian service that can be ren- 
dered without Him. The anointing which is given 
to every one is, in an important sense, an anointing for 
service. It is that without which nothing can be 
properly and acceptably done. If churches were com- 
posed of surrendered lives there would be no trouble 
or friction. The Spirit would so administer the grace 
of God, dividing gifts to each for his work, that glo- 
rious results would be certain and abundant. But 
this is the trouble with us. It is not certain that there 
ever has been such a church. In the Christian house- 
hold there are many "babes." And in some churches 
there seems to be hardly a surrendered, life. Of course 
safe and efficient service cannot be depended on in 
such a church. The Spirit is not honored, and His 
presence is not felt to anoint and guide. One sur- 
rendered life is worth more to God, doubtless, than 
a great congregation of lukewarm church members, 



Jesus Led of the Spirit. 123 

who have a name that they live and are dead. Just 
to the extent that a church is surrendered to the Spirit 
is it of use to the Spirit. If everything done and given 
hy us, except what is done and given at the instance 
of the love of God in us, were blotted out entirely, 
or never had been done or given at all, it would de- 
tract nothing from our reward in eternity. Let us 
not deceive ourselves. Service that is not anointed — 
that is not rendered through love to God — is not ac- 
ceptable service, and will bring us no reward in eter- 
nity. "Though I speak with the tongues of men and 
of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sound- 
ing brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have 
the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and 
all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I 
could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am 
nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed 
the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, 
and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." x All 
this is said to render as emphatic as anything can be 
made, the truth that there is no possible service, even 
though it involve a sacrifice of all things to the best 
ends, even of life itself, that can bring us the least 
reward, if the motive that prompts it is not love. 
For such service we will not be given a reduced re- 
ward; we will be given no reward at all. In view of 
this fact, it is important that we pause occasionally, 
all of us, and see how far we are Spirit-led in service; 
how much of what we say, and do, and give, will stand 
the test of the judgment. Jesus' life was a given life. 
It was an anointed life. It was necessary that it should 



*lCor. xiii. 1-3. 



124 The Hope of His Causing. 

be. Can we hope to render to God unanointed service 
that will be acceptable when He could not do so? 
Nay, verily. 

No matter, then, what service we render, we must 
be anointed for it. We must do it as of the ability 
that God gives. We must be moved to it by that love 
which is "shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy 
Ghost." x We must do all "to the glory of God," and 
to do so, must do it with right motive. 

How then are we to be led by the Spirit? First of 
all, we must be surrendered to the Spirit, that we may 
be filled by Him; and as He is love, and love is the 
fulfillment of the law, and the only acceptable motive 
in service, we will then be consciously led by love. 
"God is love," 2 and "perfect love casteth out fear." a 
When the consciousness cf perfect love is given, there 
will be no internal disturbance, no doubtful question- 
ings of motive, no anxiety of soul as to the accepta- 
bility of Eervice. In such a service there will be no 
slavish yielding to a driving sense of duty, but rather 
a joyous and glad devotion of life and substance to 
the object of supreme love. Who ever heard of a 
mother caring for her child as a matter of duty? The 
little one is ill. Day after day and night after night 
she sits by the little crib. She watches every change 
in the expression of its face. She anticipates as fa'r 
as possible its every need. All the faculties of her 
being stand at their utmost tension. A watching" 
friend comes up and says, "Now do go and rest awhile. 
Hour after hour you have watched and waited on the 
child. You have done your duty to it. So don't be 



1 Eom. viii. 5. 2 1 John iv. S. 3 1 John iv. II 



Jesus Led op the Spirit. 125 

afraid to stop now and seek necessary refreshment and 
sleep." Duty! Afraid! Think of such service be- 
ing rendered through a sense of duty. What would 
be the reply? "No; I am not tired; I am not sleepy. 
No, I will stay/' What is it? Her heart is in the 
little crib. Love "constrains" her. She will gladly 
die for it, if need be. It is not a sense of duty. Per- 
fect love doesn't know anything about duty service. 
It has no line at which it' will feel that a task is done, 
and hopes to stop and rest itself. It rejoices in service. 
"If ye love me ye will keep my commandments." 
Self-sacrifice is a privilege to love. No wonder per- 
fect love "casteth out fear." It runs so gladly. This 
is anointed service. It is Spirit-led service. "The 
love of Christ constraineth me." It is a new life. It 
is as high above the duty-life of perfunctory service 
as heaven is high above the earth. It sweetens every 
experience. It is the fulfillment of the law. 

Let it be settled in our minds, then, that we cannot 
lead the Spirit. We cannot shape our own lives, and 
lay our own plans, and call Him to execute them. 
Jesus did not use the Father. The Father used him. 
The plans were God's. The words that He spake, the 
doctrine He proclaimed, the mighty works he wrought, 
all were by and from the Father. He did not lead 
the Spirit. He trusted the Spirit to lead Him. So 
must we. We have yielded our members as instru- 
ments of righteousness, to be used of the Spirit. It is 
He that "divides to every man severally, as Fie will." 
The restful, peaceful, triumphant life is the life that 
is yielded up to God. Jesus had a human will, but 
it was lost in God's will. So should it be with us. 
He must lead. 



JESUS' DOCTRINE GIVEN HIM. 

Nothing can be more important to us than to be 
sound in doctrine. To be driven with every wind of 
doctrine means, and must mean, an unstable, distracted, 
wretched spiritual state. We must get our feet upon 
solid truth if we stand firm in the faith. Those who 
imagine that it matters little what one believes, so that 
he is sincere, put the intrinsic value of truth upon a 
plane with falsehood. To see and believe in truth is 
better than to embrace error, however sincerely it may 
be entertained. It does not matter that the Father 
graciously bears with us in our gropings after truth, 
and if Christians at all, blesses us in a degree, despite 
our wrong notions. Truth means much more to us 
than error. It will not be shaken from under us. Error 
may be, and that too, not by truth, but by other errors. 
As long as we hold to important errors we are liable 
to drift from one error to another. What I am saying 
is, of course, much more important in regard to the 
great ground doctrines of our most holy faith, but it 
applies equally to all errors. No one can ever be, in a 
high sense, spiritual, who is not sound in the great 
foundation doctrines of the Christ. 

And how are we to be sound in doctrine? In the 
midst of such vast confusion, where learning and genius 
are arrayed upon all sides of all questions, what chance 
is there for an ordinary man to know what to believe. 
How can he hope ever to sift the heaps of chaff that 
men have put before him, and find the scattered grains 
(126) 



Jesus' Doctrine Given Him. 127 

of truth? He cannot do it. He could hardly take a 
more certain road to endless bewilderment. Let us 
understand that we are not to look to what men have 
said in this search. 

The Bible, the old Bible from Genesis to Kevelation 
is the very word of God. It is truth. It is the only 
authoritative expression of His will. We need go no 
further than to its pages for light. "The entrance of 
Thy word giveth light." And the best qualification for 
its study is an humble heart, a surrendered life. I 
would say then that any honest soul can find for him- 
self the very truth, so far as he is by experience in 
grace prepared to be taught, without consulting the 
opinions of men. First of all we must be yielded up 
to the Spirit of truth. "If any man will do His will, 
he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God," 1 
and that is the most important thing we need to know 
of it. The processes through which truth is to be found 
are moral, rather than mental, and involve the life 
more than the mind. Eesearch, however learned or 
profound, has never been able to find it. There are no 
professors who can impart it. Jesus said, "I thank 
thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou 
hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and 
hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father; for 
so it hath seemed good in thy sight." 2 Truth must 
be revealed, not to the weak only but quite as truly 
to the great and wise; and before it is revealed in fulness 
there must be the gift of "a Spirit of wisdom and reve- 
lation in the knowledge of God." So it hath pleased 
the Father. If, then we want to be sound in doctrine 



1 John vii. 17. 2 Matt. xi. 25. 26. 



i28 The Hope of His Calling. 

let us first of all be thoroughly yielded up to God. He 
will teach us His will. The Spirit of wisdom and reve- 
lation which he gives can open the deep things of God 
to any who put themselves in an attitude to be taught 
of Him. 

Jesus said, "My doctrine is not mine, but His that 
sent Me." x As a man He did not depend upon the 
powers of His mind. Neither was He looking to the 
dogmas of the learned. He had a human mind and 
a human will, and might have formulated a human 
creed, or statement of doctrine. But He did not. He 
had no doctrine of His own. He did not want any. 
God's doctrine was perfect. He accepted it, believed 1 
it, proclaimed it, lived it. He wanted no change in it. 

Even so should it be with us. We are to "adorn the 
•doctrine of God our Savior in all things." 2 We are 
not to act after the "commandments and doctrines of 
men." 3 We are to hold fast and proclaim that "form 
of doctrines that was delivered," 4 because, he that 
"abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God." 5 
Our doctrine should be not our own, but His that sent 
us. 

In this age of rationalism, when Spirit guidance is 
so little sought after; when it seems rather to be a 
theory to be believed in, than an experience without 
which we may not safely proceed in His service; when 
the opinions and devices of men, are proclaimed with 
so much vehemence; when human machinery and di- 
plomacy, and schemes, are given such prominence in 
church work as to impress one, that in them, with 



•John vii. 16. 2 Titus ii. 10. 3 Col. ii. 22. '♦Rom. vi. 7. 
5 2 John 9. 



Jesus' Doctrine Given Him. 129 

many lies the hope of triumph; when the simplicity of 
Christ and the apostles is so far discarded, and men 
as a rule, no longer wait in the "upper chamber" for 
imbuement of power, but seek it chiefly, in learning 
and novelty, and natural gifts; when one says, "I am 
of Paul" and another "I of Apollos," and another "I of 
Cephas;" when the Christian world is torn and dis- 
tracted through the opinions and strife of men; in 
this age, I say, we do well to remember that Jesus 
said, "Hy doctrine is not mine, but His that sent Me." 

Settle it in your minds, that, there is a life before 
us, in which we will be free from subserviency to the 
doctrines of men. How can the Spirit teach an intol- 
erant, conceited, dogmatic man? Sectarianism, that 
carnal spirit, branded by the apostle Paul, is still the 
awful curse of Christendom. It blinds the mind, per- 
verts the life, and cuts off from us the doctrines of God. 
It is earthly, sensual, devilish. Let us not then be 
bigots. Let us not glory in men. Let us seek rather 
to be able always, and truly, to say, "My doctrine is 
not mine, but His that sent me." 

A truly spiritual man will not be an intolerant prop- 
agandist of human doctrines and traditions. As God 
comes into the life, the influence of what is purely 
human will go out of it. We need no basis for vanity 
and pride. He that glorieth let him glory in the Lord. 
Let every man have an open Bible, and the right to 
interpret it under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, 
and follow his own convictions; but let him not set- 
up his opinions as a standard of truth for others. Let 
him rather, in a spirit of humility, charitably serve his 
brother, for his good unto edification, and not as the 
•champion of a dogma. 
9 



130 The Hope of His Calling. 

Let us beware then, of the doctrines and traditions 
of men, lest they render the word of God of none effect 
in our lives. We are not called to bondage. Whom 
Christ makes free is free indeed. We must not quake 
before human opinion. Christ and the revelation given 
us in his word, as it is "opened" to us by the Spirit, 
should be the light that is in us. We should not be 
afraid of being called eccentrics, or ecclesiastical cranks. 
The people of God were called to be a "peculiar people/' 
Christ was a very peculiar man in His day. His doc- 
trine was exceedingly peculiar. It differed radically 
from all the schools of theology. It assailed the most 
sacred traditions of the learned, and overthrew all exist- 
ing notions of worship. It was peculiar in that it was 
not human. It sought no adaptation, or conformity to 
the views of the age, or people to whom it was delivered. 
It was not His. It was given Him. And we may h& 
sure if a man's doctrine is given him in this age, and 
it should be, it will, in many things, be a peculiar 
doctrine. It will be peculiar to the world that lieth 
in wickedness; and it will seem peculiar to worldly 
minded church members. He who is unwilling to suffer 
reproach for Christ's sake, he who seeks honor of men 
rather than that honor which cometh from God only, 
is not apt to make progress in becoming a spiritual man. 
He is not prepared to be taught. He that thinketh 
he knows anything, knows nothing yet as he ought. 
We should be as blank paper before God, that we may 
become living epistles of His, written in fleshly tables 
of the heart. Settle it that you will not be a bondman 
to human opinion, no matter how high, how ancient, 
or how universal. False teaching antedates the tragedy 
in Eden. The deluge only compassed its boundaries* 



Jesus' Doctrine Given Him. 131 

There is but one source of doctrine to the spiritual man. 
It must be given by Him that sent him. 

What sweetness and relief there is in freedom from 
bondage to human dogmas. They are so complex, so 
contradictory, so bewildering, so full of bigotry, so un- 
Christlike. We do not have to accept them. Our 
teacher is God. In His written word is the very, and. 
whole truth, and the Holy Ghost as a Spirit of revela- 
tion, is its only authoritative interpreter to us. Our 
doctrine is not our own. It is not from men. It is- 
His that sent us. 

Let us then, look to the word, as its meaning is re- 
vealed to us by the Spirit of truth for light. And when. 
He gives it let us not stop to compare it with a creed,, 
or inquire what men will think, or what it will bring 
upon us at their hands, but walk in it. We are not our 
own any more. We are called not to manifest our- 
selves, but God, whose epistles Ave are, known and read 
of all men. The Spirit administers the grace of God. 
He divides to us. When His still small voice speaks, 
let us wrap our faces. It is God. 

In the spiritual life then, we must not be self-willed, 
nor lean to our own understanding, nor follow our own 
doctrines. We must wait upon God. He will, in due 
time, give a Spirit of revelation that will enlighten the 
e}<es of the understanding, and leave no distressing 
doubts as to His will concerning us. 

Neither will we be left in uncertainty as to the ac- 
ceptability of our service. This would be anxious ser- 
vice. It could not be peaceful, or satisfactory. But 
when we are given plain testimony that we please Him, 
how very different. .Who that hath felt this testimony 
that "he pleased God" can express its sweetness? What 



132 The Hope of His Calling. 

a charm it gives to service. And may we have this 
testimony? Surely, surely. If we are Spirit led, "walk 
by the Spirit/' we may know "that we keep His com- 
mandments, and do those things that are pleasing in 
His sight." We may live with the consciousness of His 
favor, of His presence, and of His smiles. How gladly, 
and joyfully our feet run, when we find ourselves drawn 
on by constraining love that feels the Spirit leading, 
that realizes His presence helping, that hears His voice 
approving. If we start off to follow our own doctrines 
and plans, He may not be expected to follow. But if 
we wait upon Him till He leads, and by the Spirit walk 
in his steps, then will we have sweet communion with 
Him; and our hearts will burn within us as He talks 
to us by the way. 



JESUS ANOINTED AND SENT TO PREACH 
THE GOSPEL* 

"When He had opened the book, He found the place 
where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon 
me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel 
to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, 
to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering 
of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are 
braised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. . . . 
And He began to say unto them, This day is this scrip- 
ture fulfilled in your ears/' x 

If any man was ever fitted by nature to preach the 
gospel without a divine call and anointing, it was the 
man Christ Jesus. Yet He waited to be "anointed and 
sent." Why did He do it? Because it was necessary. 
While as a man, he was indeed perfect, yet the work 
upon which He was about to enter was not a human 
work. It was above His humanity. He realized His 
inability to enter successfully upon it unless "anointed 
and sent"' by the Father. And is it strange, when the 
Master Himself, in whose steps we are to walk, as a 
preacher, set such an example to all who should preach 
after Him, that the query should arise, even if not 
divinely asked, "How can he preach except he be sent?" 
How can he, truly, if Christ could not? 

In the new dispensation of the grace of God the 
Holy Spirit, as administrator, must, in the nature of 



^ukeiv. 17,18,21. 
(i33) 



134 Thk Hope of His Calling. 

things, "divide to every man severally." x How else 
could He administer? "To one is given by the Spirit 
the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge 
"by the same Spirit." 2 "He gave some, apostles; and 
some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pas- 
tors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for 
the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body 
of Christ." 3 "Having then gifts differing according 
to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let 
us prophesy according to the proportion of faith; or 
ministry, let us wait on our ministering; or he that 
teacheth, on teaching; or he that exhorteth on exhorta- 
tion." 4 "As every man hath received the gift, even 
so minister the same one to another, as good stewards 
of the manifold grace of God. If any man speak, let 
liim speak as the oracles of God." 5 

While every worker in the service of the Lord should, 
in an important sense, be anointed for the work to 
which he is called, it is pre-eminently true of the min- 
istry. It is not an arbitral exaction. It grows out of 
the nature of things. It is because, primarily, we can 
do nothing in God's service unless we are anointed. We 
are not qualified. We have not the power. If it were 
said that a man must have sight in order to be a guide 
up the Matterhorn, it would not be an arbitrary ex- 
action. It would simply exclude those from attempt- 
ing this service who are unable to render it. If the 
blind lead the blind, then both shall fall into the ditch. 
We should not enter the ministry unless we are called 
to it, because we cannot hope to be anointed of the 



^Cor. xii. 11. *lCor. xii. 8. 3Eph. iv. 11, 12. *~Rom. 
xii. 6-8. si Pet. iv. 10, 11. 



Jbsus Sent to Preach. 135 

Spirit for a service to which He does not send us, and 
we cannot successfully fill it unless we are anointed of 
Him. Jesus could have preached without a special call 
and anointing if any man could have done so, but He 
did not attempt it. 

Has God called us to this work? If He has, we may 
"be sure He will, in a personal and comforting sense, 
be with us in the fulfillment of it. He who has 
said, "without Me ye can do nothing," has also said, 
"Lo, I am with you alway." If He has singled us out 
as instruments to be used by the Holy Ghost in accom- 
plishing foreknown purposes of His own, in the admin- 
istration of the grace of God, we are in His hands for 
this work; and if wholly yielded up to Him, we may 
walk in His strength in the fulfillment of the work to 
which He calls us. He does not call us to do something 
for Him as one man would ask help of another. He 
calls to work and confers commensurate power. When 
Paul came to recount his wonderful labors and suffer- 
ings in the gospel, he was careful to add, "yet not I, 
but the grace of God which was with me." In this 
service there is, for this reason, no such thing as neces- 
sary failure. It was as impossible for Moses in the right 
discharge of bis mission to fail as it was for Pharaoh 
to triumph over God. And so equally is it impossible 
for us to fail in the faithful prosecution of the mis- 
sion to which the God of Moses has called us. 

We enter a field of labor we have not chosen. We 
seek to bring about the accomplishment of ends we 
know perfectly in the outstart we cannot of ourselves 
effect. We would condemn as empty and valueless a 
ministry attended only with results of human power. 
We seek to lead souls out of the kingdom and power 



136 Thk Hopk of His Causing. 

of Satan, and yet, Satan is more powerful than our- 
selves. We seek to see men translated into the king- 
dom of God, and yet His kingdom is invisible, imma- 
terial, spiritual, and men must be born into it. They 
must be regenerated, recreated, made new creatures in 
Christ Jesus, in order to enter it. The work is essen- 
tially and entirely divine. Then, if we are dependent 
upon God for the fruits of our ministry, let us be sure 
we recognize and honor Him in our labors, not in word 
only, but by such humility as should characterize weak- 
ness, such faith as recognizes and relies on His power, 
and such gratitude, thanks, and praise, as ascribe to 
Him all the glory. 

Let us depend upon Him to guide and use us. Let 
us expect Him to make our ministry successful. Let 
us feel that we enter upon a God-designed and a God- 
prepared work. We may not indeed be successful in 
the eyes of the world. Our labors may not be crowned 
with wonderful visible results, or win for us a name. 
But let us expect them certainly to succeed. If He 
impresses us to preach to sinners, He has something 
to say to them through us, and by the same power 
that impresses our hearts with a consciousness of this 
duty, He can open and prepare their hearts to hear 
and feel what Lie has to say to them through us. He 
can make His word in our mouths quick and powerful. 
Let us expect that He will surely do it. If He had 
not opened the heart of Lydia to receive the truth, 
Paul's preaching to her would have been in vain. Phil- 
ip did not discover the Ethiopian eunuch returning 
in his chariot. He did not know he was groping in 
the scriptures for light. It was God who discovered 
him, and who knew what was in his mind and heart. 



Jesus Sent to Preach. 137 

It was He who sent Philip to him with the gospel and. 
he was saved. Peter did not go to the house of Cor- 
nelius by chance. He would not have gone there at all. 
It was God, who, in the fulfillment of His own pur- 
poses of grace, and in answer to prayer, sent him to this 
penitent Gentile with the gospel message, and while 
he spake the words that were given unto him, the Holy 
Ghost fell on all them that heard, and they were saved. 
If he sends us to preach then, let us realize that there- 
is some one at least, on every occasion, for whom he 
has a message; and let us look to Him for it, and preach 
the message He gives us. If He sends us to the "desert" 
let us go nothing doubting. Some one is there who 
needs our help and to whom we are sent. 

Let us know also, assuredly, that He does not call 
us to service and send us off alone to attempt its per- 
formance. He knows we can of ourselves do nothing. 
Is it reasonable that He would directly, and powerfully 
touch our consciousness, and by unmistakable, and im- 
movable impression, lead us to undertake a work in His 
name, every result of which must be by divine power, 
and then leave us without conscious guidance, to grope 
aimlessly in our endeavors to perform it? He might 
as well have sent Moses again to the mighty Pharaoh, 
from whose dominions he had once fled in terror, with- 
out going with him. When He sends us, let us know 
that He is sending us of purpose, to those in whom He 
is concerned, and for whom He has a message, and that 
He is certainly going with us, and will be with our 
mouths. Let us deliver the message He gives with con- 
fident expectation that it will not return unto Him 
again void, but will accomplish that whereunto He hath 
sent it, whether it prove the savor of life unto life, or 



138 The Hope of His Calling. 

of death unto death. Let us deliver it in His name, as 
His ambassadors, with entire absence of self-assertion, 
and expect it to carry within itself, to the heart and 
conscience of those to whom it is sent, the authority 
and power behind our commission. 

If we are called to preach we are called to preach the 
word of life. We are not called to tickle the fancies 
of men with idle speeches, to entertain the intellect 
with displays of human learning, or human genius. If 
we do not preach in demonstration of the Spirit and 
of power, we preach beneath our commission. God does 
not call men to preach themselves, their theories, nor 
their conceits. He calls them to> preach Christ and 
Him crucified, the power of God unto salvation to every 
one that believeth. Let us, then, be sure we do not 
abuse our commission. Let us not distrust and dis- 
honor the Holy Ghost. If He sends us to preach to a 
people, let us suppose that they want the gospel. Mr. 
Spurgeon says, "People have often asked me, 'What is 
the secret of your success?' I always answer that I have 
no other secret than this, that I have preached the gos- 
pel — not about the gospel, but the gospel — the full, 
free, glorious gospel of the living Christ who is the 
incarnation of good news." Let us not imagine that 
those to whom we are sent want something else. We 
have no right to think so. If He has prepared them 
to hear, they have been prepared to hear the truth. 
If He has a message to send to them by us, it is a divine 
message. It is from Him and of Him. It is not trash. 
It is not worldly. And there is some one at least for 
whom it is sent. If there be but one such, yet for that 
one Christ died, and shall we turn from the God-pre- 
pared one of our audience — the Lydia with opened 



Jesus Sent to Preach. 139 

heart — who may be benefited, and to whom we are sent 
with a message from the throne, to entertain with vain 
words, the idle fancy of the indifferent, the impenitent, 
the unprepared? Let us be sure then, that in every 
audience to which God sends us with the gospel mes- 
sage, some one is prepared to hear it. 

Eev. William Scott, having addressed a strange audi- 
ence, felt at the close of his sermon an unaccountable 
impression to add a few words not specially connected 
with the subject of his discourse, and said, "If there is a 
poor soul here weary of life, and worn with its strain and 
worry, I would say to such an one, God loves you." 
Why did he say it? Was it accidental? Certainly not. 
There was a soul present for whom this message was 
sent. She was on her way to the river's brink, to 
drown her insupportable sorrows, if, perchance, she 
might in its rolling flood. Attracted in the merciful 
providence of God, to stop in at the place of worship, 
she listened to these gracious words. The Holy Spirit 
had sent them to her, and they went deep into her 
broken heart. A new light came into her life. The 
wish for self-destruction was gone. She returned to 
her room to pray unto this God of pity, and love, and 
throwing herself into His saving arms, found peace and 

joy- 
Let us preach then, whether by way of invitation, or 
warning, as to the God-prepared. Let us realize that 
we fill a specific place in His plans of mercy. Let us 
not storm in reliance on human vehemence, nor rail in 
human passion, nor rage in human wrath. Why should 
we try by mere energy of human effort to do what we 
profess to believe can be done only by the power of God, 
and thereby discredit our own belief in the divinity 



140 The Hope of His Calling. 

of our mission? The servant of the Lord must not 
strive. He must be gentle unto all. "Knowing the 
terror of the Lord we persuade men." We cannot drive 
them. 

A Spirit filled and Spirit directed ministry succeeds 
in every service. To think otherwise would be a re- 
flection on its author. It is God's ministry. He has 
called it. It is under His guidance, and dependent 
upon His power. We do not pretend to understand the 
mysteries of its force. The plans are His. The only 
perfect knowledge of the heart is His. The only con- 
victing and converting power is His. A Paul may plant 
and an Apollos may water, but He must give the in- 
crease. The preacher therefore, who does not have God 
with Him, must surely fail. He may be as learned in 
science as Darwin and Huxley; as cyclopaedic in knowl- 
edge as Gibbon and Hume; as gifted in speech as Kous- 
seau and Ingersoll; but in the sphere of spiritual and 
divine things, he, like them, will be as sounding brass, 
or a tinkling cymbal. 

There are no accidents in a Spirit-filled ministry. 
Paul did not fight as one who beats the air. Do earthly 
generals command their legions to storm empty forts? 
Does the Captain of our salvation send his ministry to 
do an aimless and chance work? Does He have no 
method in His mighty war upon evil? Certainly He 
has. But it is in His own council. The Spirit divideth 
to every man severally as He will. If we have the 
Spirit, we are to be led by the Spirit. This is our only 
safety and our only guaranty of triumph. 

If then we are filling a definite place in the plans, 
and in the hands of the Spirit, He can make us in that 
place as successfully accomplish His purposes as the 



Jesus Sent to Preach. 141 

mightiest archangel. We are called from self-will, self- 
service, and self-guidance, to be possessed, guided, and 
"used by the Spirit in the accomplishment of His own 
purposes of grace. We are, therefore, wholly depend- 
ent upon Him. This is true of the weakest man called 
to preach, and it is equally true of the strongest. Men 
are all alike weak in God's eyes. Intellectuality is one 
thing — this they may have. Spirituality is another, and 
greater thing — this they cannot have. The world by- 
wisdom knew not God. It may know much of His 
handiwork. It may name the stars of heaven, and the 
flora of earth. It may speak with the tongues of men, 
perchance of angels. It may have all knowledge of 
creeds, and theologies, and forms; but it can never dis- 
cover unto others, nor experience for itself, that love 
which passeth knowledge. It can never guide another, 
nor enter itself, into that life of power and rest which 
has Christ for its author. The foolishness of God is 
greater than the wisdom of men. Alas, for the min- 
ister, however eloquent, however learned, who goes into 
the pulpit as an avowed ambassador for Christ, and 
offers in His name, to auditors struggling with furies ■ 
of temptation, and sin and remorse, the lifeless wisdom 
of this world. The history of the human race in all the 
ages illustrates the futility of human learning, or elo- 
quence, or logic, or works, to give man a better nature, 
or inspire the soul with satisfying hope. When Paul 
came to address the disciples of Grecian philosophy, his 
preaching was not with excel] eucy of speech, nor with 
enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration 
of the Spirit and of power, that their faith might not 
stand in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. 
The chief trouble with the pulpit to-day is a want of 



142 The Hope of His Calling. 

divine anointing. The Holy Ghost is dishonored, and 
the power of God withheld. Man is too much exalted 
and God is too far ignored. He is talked about by us 
instead of speaking through us. His power is discussed 
rather than felt; it is proclaimed rather than experi- 
enced. His love is eulogized rather than exemplified. 
The sufficiency of His grace to give rest and peace to 
the soul is recognized by us without a satisfying con- 
sciousness of divine rest and peace in our own souls. 

What the world needs is the living Christ in the 
pulpit; His love inflaming with zeal and boldness; His 
tenderness reaching out to the poor and weak; His joys 
thrilling the heart of the preacher with the realities of 
the salvation recommended unto others; His power 
flaming in words quick and powerful, and sharper than 
any two-edged sword from mouths which He has 
opened; His name adored, honored, and glorified as the 
author of spiritual life, and the ability to serve. When 
there comes an era of trust in God, there will come an 
era of power in the church. When man realizes his 
own nothingness, and has faith to see the arm of the 
Lord revealed, the world will be shaken again. 

The soul of man cannot be fed on the husks of empty 
words. Its longings cannot be satisfied with theories 
and speculations, with methodical systems of good 
works, with fanatical zeal in sectarian propagandism, 
nor any basis of church administration that substitutes 
the wkdom and diplomacy of men, for the guidance 
and power of the Holy Ghost. While Satan tramples 
upon infant Christian life, while shadows darken the 
horizon of hope with multitudes of converted people, 
while sin triumphs over a thousand honest vows from 
Christian hearts, made in ignorance of the Christian's 



Jesus Sent to Preach. 143 

birthright; while thousands who should be in spiritual 
sunshine and triumpnant service, are ready to faint 
under a sense of emptiness and weakness — a conscious- 
ness of spiritual destitution — after utmost self-endeav- 
ors after holiness, the agonizing cry of the inmost soul 
of the general Christian world, is for power! power!! 
power!!! Nothing but power; actual, living, vital, up- 
lifting, joy-inspiring, conscious, divine power can meet 
our needs; power to satisfy our longings after God; 
power to cast out Satan from our lives; power to illum- 
inate the eyes of the soul with satisfying spiritual light; 
power to comfort the despairing heart with radiant 
hope; power to overcome sin in the flesh; power to fill 
the heart with perfect love winch casteth out fear; 
power to give sweet, abiding, conscious communion 
with an indwelling Christ; power to equip for joyous, 
zealous, triumphant service. How could it be thought 
possible, that our Father, whose love is infinite in com- 
pass and tenderness, could ever have designed, that His 
own children, by nature and by adoption, poor and 
weak, in the midst of enemies and sorrows, endowed 
by His own touch, with aspirations of soul that long 
and cry for satisfying conscious spiritual acquaintance 
and communion with Himself, should be left with noth- 
ing better to be hoped for in this life, than to sigh, and 
grope unsatisfied, in a shadowy twilight, of spiritual 
knowledge and life. Such a view is dishonoring to Him 
as our Father, and* contradicts the promises, and assur- 
ances of His word. There is a place in the line of 
Christian experience at which right aspirations of the 
soul will be satisfied. And it is the heritage of all. 
It must be so. The life of simple, God-honoring trust 
has ever been, and ever will be, crowned with power 
and victory, and satisfied with peace and rest. 






144 T H E Hope of His Causing. 

Let "us then preach a gospel of power — the all-suf- 
cient power of God to a sinful world that must perish 
without His mighty help; to a Christian age that does 
not realize its birthright. To do this successfully, we 
must be "anointed to preach." We are by nature as 
weak as any auditor. Whatever may be our names, or 
positions, or degrees, or titles in the church, or in the 
world, we are but men, and man can do nothing in 
Christian growth and service, without the indwelling, 
..and strengthening of Christ. 

Again the preacher, however brilliant, or strong by 
gifts of nature, will, in a degree, lack personal piety, 
.as well as spiritual joy, and power, who does not habit- 
ually live in an atmosphere of trust and grace. If none 
but God and himself know how much he lacks in 
thought and experience of being what an ambassador 
■of Christ should be, the voice of conscience will, never- 
theless, turn the praises of men into ashes as they fall 
upon his head. lie will ascend the pulpit self-con- 
demned. How can I commend confidently to others 
the sufficiency of grace that fails to satisfy the needs 
of my own spiritual life? How can I say to* others, 
""Kejoice, and again I say rejoice," when I cannot re- 
joice in spirit myself? We may expect to preach in 
demonstration of the Spirit and of power no further 
than we have been led of the Spirit, and felt His power 
in our own personal experience. Let us then, above 
.all things else, live surrendered, trusting, anointed lives, 
that our knowledge of spiritual things may be experi- 
mental. To be "filled with the Spirit," "led by the 
Spirit," and "walk by the Spirit," is the privilege, and 
duty of every one who is "anointed and sent" to preach. 
TLet us then, be content with nothing less. 



WHAT IS ENTIRE CONSECRATION? 

And now a question of practical, and great moment 
with us is, How are we to avail ourselves of the all- 
sufficient grace of God; how are we to enter this life 
of rest and victory; how are we to become spiritual in 
contradistinction to carnal; how are we to live the 
anointed life? 

First of all there must be entire consecration. It 
belongs distinctively to the human side of a holy life. 
"While it is by grace truly, just as saving faith is in a 
sense by grace, still it recognizes the human volition, 
-and must be a voluntary act on our part. 

As we have seen elsewhere, the "flesh," or ff body," 
lies between the "new man" and outward conscious 
life, or "walk." We must "walk" or assert the life of 
the soul outwardly, through the members of the body. 
There is, of course, no other way, as the soul is housed 
in the body and can only act through it. So if the 
"body does not respond to the will of the soul, we will 
he unable to do outwardly as we would. And this is 
precisely our state. Therefore sanctification of out- 
ward conscious life involves, necessarily, the sanctifica- 
tion, or setting apart, of the "body," as a medium 
through which we are to carry out the will of the 
rational soul in dedicating itself to the service of God. 
Hence Paul besought the Koman Christians to present 
their "bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto 
God." 1 This involves entire consecration. It was not 



x Rom. xii. 1. 
(145) — 10 



146 Thk Hope of His Caujng. 

in order to obtain the Holy Ghost. They had Him, 
Pentecost had already come with them, and the Saneti- 
fler was within them. It was, however, an act that had 
to be performed by them, consciously, and as matter 
of volition, before it was possible for them to "walk by 
the Spirit." In some way, we must have power to sub- 
due the "flesh." It must be completely overcome. 
Otherwise it is impossible, in the nature of things, for 
us to live as we would. 

How then am I to present my body holy, and accept- 
able unto God? What does it imply? Am I to subdue 
and perfect it first and then present it? If so, it is 
something the scriptures plainly teach our inability 
to do. If we could do that, we would not need the 
help of the Spirit in order to walk. That seems to 
have been the mistake of the Galatians. They began 
in the Spirit, received Him in the regeneration and 
sanctification of the soul, and then thought they must 
finish the work of making their lives holy "by the 
flesh." It was plain enough that they must begin in 
the Spirit, but once made Christians, they supposed they 
should have been able to go on and perfect their own 
lives. But Paul says, "0 foolish Galatians, having 
begun in the Spirit are you now made perfect by the 
flesh?" It was exactly what they could not do, and 
needed to have done for them. We cannot then, in 
this sense, render our bodies holy and acceptable before 
we present them, and it is not said that we shall do so. 
To attempt it would be to return to the self-life of 
perpetual and hopeless failure. Death would overtake 
us before we would be ready to make the sacrifice. This 
"vile body," with the law of sin in its members warring 
against the soul, bringing it into captivity, and leading 






What is Entire Consecration? 147 

it to do the things that it would not, and to leave un- 
done the things that it would; this "flesh" which "is 
enmity against God/' and serves "the law of sin" de- 
spite our efforts to overcome it, must be subdued by a 
power greater than our own. Instead of having power 
to> take us captive, it must, itself be taken captive for 
us, and held in captivity by the Spirit, that "lusteth- 
against it," before we can be outwardly holy. It must 
be done for us because we cannot do it for ourselves. 

Let us understand then, that in presenting our bodies 
in entire consecration, it does not devolve on us first 
to subdue and overcome and make them holy. From 
the moment of the creation of the "new man" "in 
righteousness and true holiness," it has willed to sub- 
due the flesh and to sanctify the outward life. But 
its efforts are vain. The life remains marred, and un- 
natural — carnal. The "old man" asserts himself in the 
flesh despite our efforts to the contrary, and defeats the 
will of the soul to be holy, as we have shown at length 
in discussing the carnal state. We never can be "made 
perfect by the flesh." Paul found it so. He had "no- 
confidence in the flesh." x It was a "body of death" 
to him. We must be delivered from its domination.. 
"Who," he cries, in an agony, "shall deliver me from 
the body of this death?" 2 And then, in a voice of 
triumph, he exclaims, "I thank God through our Lord 
Jesus Christ." Here is the deliverer. It is He who is 
by the Spirit "made unto us sanctification." 3 And 
what is the deliverance for which he cries? What, but 
deliverance from the control of the body, from its 
power to take the soul captive to the law of sin in its 



1 Phil. iii. 3. 2 Rom. vii. 24. 3 1 Cor. i. 30. 



148 The Hope of His Calling. 

members? Does not deliverance itself imply a state of 
captivity? And what is it he seeks but to be made free? 
If the heart were not right, the disposition, the will 
of the soul, he would not be in captivity to evil, but 
in alliance with it. It is him only, therefore, whom 
the Son makes free, that is free indeed. 

It is this painful and hateful "captivity" that Paul 
has been lamenting; this falseness of the outer life, or 
"walk," to the will of the "inner man;" this monstrous 
deformity in which a sanctified soul is dragged into 
captivity to the law of sin in the flesh. There must, 
therefore, as we have said, be a deliverer, and a specific 
deliverance, if we escape this fearful, and horrible bond- 
age. A captive cannot deliver himself. If so, he should 
never have been in captivity. Captivity implies the ex- 
ercise of overpowering coercion. It involves the dis- 
position to resist on the part of the captive. Paul de- 
plores a state of captivity, painful, hateful, captivity. 
He can be rescued from it only by one who is able to 
bind and subdue the strong man who holds him in 
bondage. And who is this? Who but Christ? "I 
thank God through our Lord Jesus Christ." 

How could we be called on, in entire consecration to 
first gain for ourselves this deliverance, and then pre- 
sent our bodies? Can the captive deliver up the captor? 
I am to present my body "'holy and acceptable," truly, 
but what does it mean? Are those right who suppose 
that I must take my captor prisoner, and bind him hand 
and foot, and bring him and present him unto God? 
Nay, nay, this cannot be. It cannot mean that. It is 
to be done in fact, as it can only be done by us, as 
matter of volition, of heart offering. I have a body. 
It is mine. It has a law of sin in its members that I 



What is Entire Consecration? 149 

can neither remove nor overcome, but is without indi- 
viduality in the sense of moral endowments, such as the 
soul has. It has no volition. It is part of myself — my 
body. It is, in its present unredeemed state, a very dis- 
agreeable body to me, "a body of death." Now I want 
this body set apart to God's service. I want its power 
to render my life fruitless, destroyed. While I cannot 
change or control it, I have a right to dispose of it, 
and to negotiate for an alliance with power that is 
able to give me the rightful supremacy over it to which, 
as owner, I am entitled. It is a servant in successful 
rebellion. I want it to serve God, and it will not do 
it, and I lack power to compel it. I have given myself 
to Him, and I want all that belongs to me brought 
into His service. I understand that this body will not 
now be changed in nature, so as to be in harmony with 
the regenerated soul. This will be done when res- 
urrection power comes in contact with it, but not till 
then. In the meantime, however, my day of oppor- 
tunity to do good in the world is rapidly passing, and 
by the supremacy of this rebellious servant, I am pre- 
vented from outwardly and efficiently serving my Mas- 
ter. Something must be done for my relief therefore, 
before the redemption of the nature of the body in the 
resurrection, or my usefulness will be lost. I see this. 
And as the nature of this servant cannot at once be 
changed, and brought into harmony with my will, the 
next best thing is to overcome and subdue it by coercive 
power, as I have a right to do, or secure to be done 
in my behalf, and thereby compel it to yield submission 
to my will, as its lawful and rightful owner. In order 
to do this I must obtain help. I must form an alliance 
with power that is mightier than it. 



150 The Hope of His Calling. 

And this'is exactly what we are to do in entire con- 
secration. I present my body to God. I have a right 
to do it. In that act, so far as I have any power to do 
so, I separate it to His service, make it holy. Sancti- 
fication does not always involve the will of the thing 
sanctified, as we have, I hope, elsewhere seen. It may 
involve only the will of Him who has the moral right 
to give, dedicate or separate the thing sanctified. In 
this case, the only will that can be involved is the will 
of the soul, as the flesh has no will. When I set it 
apart by gift, or presentation, it is, thereby, in an im- 
portant sense, sanctified. And especially is this true 
when He to whom it is presented is able to make the 
separation real and complete by His own power. A man 
may have a very fine and powerful horse, that is so 
vicious and ungovernable as to be of no use to him. 
He can do nothing with it. Now, suppose this to be 
the case with my son, who is giving all his time and 
labor to me. He comes to me and says, "I am serving 
you the best I can, but I need the use of a horse in my 
work. I have one, but he is so vicious and ungovern- 
able, as to be of no use to me. I have tried in vain to 
master and use him. I find it is impossible for me to 
do so, but I am certain that you can do it for me. And 
so I present him to you. All I have, I have freely given 
to your service, and I want to be as efficient in it as 
possible. But I can do little unless you bring this 
animal within my control. He is mine, and I am thine. 
Now I present him to you. Take him into your own 
power and subdue him, that I may use him for you." 
I take the horse and by superior knowledge and ex- 
perience and power, I conquer and subdue and force 
him, however unwilling, into submission to my son, so 



What is Entire Consecration? 151 

that he uses him successfully, and he becomes very 
valuable to me. He is rebellious and must be kept in 
subjection, to be sure, but as this is effectively done, he 
is, in fact, set apart to my service, as truly as if it 
were done willingly. He is entitled to no credit for 
it, but the son is. So is it with us and our bodies in 
entire consecration. It will never be holy in point of 
nature till resurrection power touches it. The Bible 
teaches us that. Hence that cannot be the kind of holi- 
ness referred to in the text. It can only be sanctified 
in regard to the will of the soul. We are told to "pre- 
sent" it unto God. This we can do as matter of volition. 
It must be set apart just as a horse, or a mountain or 
a temple, or any irresponsible thing is set apart, by 
my will, and God's power. 

I love God and have given myself, and all that I 
have to Him. My soul has been set apart in its moral 
nature to His service by regeneration. But I find 
trouble with my body. I first try to- set it apart by 
my own power. But in this I signally fail. In fact, 
it takes me captive. I can do nothing with it. At 
last I come to see what I should have understood at 
first, that it is impossible that I should of myself sub- 
due it. And so in utter despair of self-help, I bring it 
to the Lord, and "present It" by definite gift, or con- 
secration to Him. He knows I want it to serve Him. 
He has seen how hard I have tried to make it obedient 
to His will. Now, recognizing fully that it is all that 
I can do, I bring it to Him. I say, "Lord, I have made 
a bad failure in trying to overcome my body, and bring 
it into subjection to thy law. I find I am unable to do 
it. I should have known this at first, as I now see, 
but I did not. I thought I could overcome it. On the 



152 The Hope of His Calling. 

contrary, however, I find that despite my utmost re- 
sistance, it dominates me, hindering me from doing the 
things that I would, and causing me to do the things 
that I hate. So I have come to see at last, that thou 
didst never expect me to overcome it, and knew it could 
not be done by me. Here, it is, Lord. I present it to 
Thee. It is my body, and I will that it be set apart 
wholly to thy service. To that end I dedicate it to 
Thee. I present it 'a living sacrifice.' It is all that 
I can do. Do thou take charge of it and compel it to 
co-operate with me in thy service, to the end that I 
may be perfect before thee, and walk in the' steps of 
thy Son." Is not this entire- consecration? When, we 
do all that it is possible for us to do, is it possible that 
more should be exacted of us? And is not this what 
every one can, at any moment, do? Is it not truly our 
reasonable service? Does it seem to be a superficial 
work? In the next chapter we will undertake to show 
what it involves, and what it secures to us. 



THE FRUITS OF ENTIRE CONSECRATION. 

In the previous chapter we have been showing that 
in entire consecration we cannot, and are not expected 
to actually do anything by the flesh, in the way of mak- 
ing ourselves perfect, for the reason that we can, in 
fact, do nothing. That it is an act of the will by which 
we definitely and forever, as matter of deliberate voli- 
tion, present, or yield, or consecrate^ our whole lives 
to God, to be possessed by Him, and used by Him, His 
power working in us both to "will and to do of His 
own good pleasure." To thus present our bodies, is 
nothing else than to surrender up to Him our whole 
lives, to live or die for His glory. 

At this point in our experience as Christians a great, 
and never-to-be-forgotten crisis is reached. It is some- 
thing definite, something specific. In it we have 
counted the cost. We have laid all upon the altar. Let 
us not suppose that because it is an act of the will, or 
of choice only, that it is therefore a trifling matter. The 
repentance and faith by which the soul is saved, in- 
volve nothing more. It is not a small matter. It is, 
on the contrary, one of transeendently great import- 
ance both in its nature and in its results to us. Neither 
will it be lightly done. We may depend upon that. 
Shallow convictions, lukewarm interest in holiness, will 
never make the sacrifice. Temporal and visible things 
will largely be lost sight of in the soul's unutterable 
yearnings after righteousness before this step will be 
taken. It means the abandonment of ourselves, our 
wills, our interests, our lives, to God. 

(153) 



154 The Hope of His Causing. 

What will be its instant gain to us? Will we as a 
certain, and immediate result, find relief from the op- 
pressions of the body? No, it does not always mean 
that. It is rather the first great voluntary step towards 
distinctively spiritual life. We may yet have many a 
painful conflict, and many a bitter defeat. Entire sanc- 
tification is not a sequence of entire consecration. 
There is no necessarily immediate connection between 
them. And why? Because entire sanctification is not 
a matter of consecration only, but rather a matter of 
faith. Consecration bears towards it more the relation 
that repentance bears to saving faith. We know that 
repentance alone cannot save. No more can consecra- 
tion sanctify. Although we may utterly abandon hope 
in self, and realize that holiness can only come as the 
gift of God, and though we may have the consciousness 
that we desire supremely that His will to be done in 
our lives, yet we may not just have realizing faith that 
He will, and does take immediate, and entire possession 
of us, to serve Himself perfectly through us, and in 
proportion to our faith will be our triumph. 

Hence in its immediate results it may mean much 
more to one than to another. To one it may involve 
instant and complete deliverance, because the faith is 
perfect, and compasses all that has been sought. Noth- 
ing shall be impossible to him that believeth. To an- 
other it may mean much indeed, and yet much less than 
this. To another it may involve only the beginning of a 
distinctively spiritual life, that will be developed in the 
process of G-od's Fatherly dealings with us — a. process 
that may cover years. But, it does,in my judgment, mean 
the same to all in the end. This is the thought of su- 
preme encouragement to* everyone. It always implies vie- 



Fruits of Entire Consecration. 155 

iory, certain victory, present or prospective. God accepts 
trie sacrifice. He never in any instance, fails to do it. 
It is well pleasing in His sight. He not only accepts 
it, but once accepted, it is accepted forever. He will 
surely bring us to the unspeakable blessings involved 
in it. He is able to do it independently of weakness, 
or inherent imperfections in us, or our lives, and He 
will do it. "Faithful is He who has called you, who 
also will do it." 1 In His own way, and by His own 
power which worketh in us mightily, He will bring us 
to a faith that will command the blessing. It may not 
come in a day, nor a month, nor a year. But it will 
neither be abandoned by Him, nor delayed. 

And how will He bring it about ? Ah, that is a ques- 
tion that comes directly home to us. I should say that 
it will surely come through suffering. We may not 
realize even remotely, how very carnal we are at the 
moment of this consecration, how very far we are re- 
moved from the end we ask. We may not at all com- 
prehend what specific changes of character it involves. 
We have not counted the cost in that way. We have 
•counted it truly and really, but we have not counted 
it by items. Dullness of spiritual apprehension may 
have rendered it impossible for us to have done so. We 
■do not understand ourselves. Much that is deplorable 
in our lives may not even have been discovered by us. 
Yet we have made a complete consecration. We have 
said, and said from the heart, "Lord, I care not what 
it may cost, I will, above all things else, to be wholly 
spiritual in my life. Let it cost all I have of worldly 
goods, let it cost all I have of reputation, let it cost the 

1 Thess. v. 24. 



156 The Hope of His Calling. 

loss of health., let it entail sufferings and persecution 
to the uttermost that it must, let it cost life itself if 
need be, I compass all that by the sufferance of thy 
love possibly can be involved, if I may but have Thee 
in all thy fullness, as Comforter, and Sanctifier, to reign 
wholly in my life. I do this intelligently, deliberately, 
without qualification, or mental reservation. That Thy 
perfect and holy will, with the blessings of a holy life, 
may be accomplished in me, I ask above, and at the cost, 
if need be, of all things beside." 

The consecration is certainly complete. And it is a 
sacrifice of a sweet savor truly. He will accept it, and 
He will bring to us the accomplishment of all that is 
involved in it. 

But what do I mean by it? That I undertake from 
this time to shape all tilings in my life according to 
His will? No. I do no»t mean that I undertake by 
inherent potency to do anything. It means that I yield 
my all into the hands of His love, to be dealt with by 
Him till His perfect will is, by His. own power, accom- 
plished in me. He needs no help. If He did we could 
not render it. It means that He is the physician and 
I am the patient. I say, "I am diseased in body. I 
have all confidence in thee as the Great Physician, 
and now in a moment of calm deliberation, viewing 
all that can possibly be involved, I put myself in thy 
hands for treatment, according to thine own will and 
power. The treatment may involve suffering. It may 
not seem good at the time but very grievous. Now 
I am frail. I am very, very weak. I am not under- 
taking to treat myself, for the reason that I cannot. 
Do Thou perfect Thy work therefore, without regard 
to my cryings for relief in moments of weakness. That 



Fruits of Entire Consecration. 157 

is my frailty. It is not my deliberate will. Not my 
will, therefore, but Thine be done." Why may not this 
be so? It is so. 

I am the marble block. He is the divine sculptor. 
I am deformed and homely. My life is ugly and barren. 
I say, "Lord, I am out of shape. My life is a horrid 
deformity. It is not what I want it to be. Take this 
shapeless block and be Thou the sculptor. Shape it 
into thine own conception of beauty and perfection. 
Will it have to be chiseled? Surely. I have considered 
that. How painful will it be? I know not, but this 
I do know, Thou art a loving, and a very tender Father, 
and I yield myself gladly and confidently into the 
hands of Thy Fatherly love. Shape my life into the 
faultless statue of Thy Son. If I cry out under heavy 
strokes of the chisel, regard it not, but finish the good 
work which Thou has begun in me." Or, again, to 
use an illustration from the Scriptures, I am the crude 
ore and He is the Eefiner. I say, "Thou divine Eefiner, 
purge me I beseech thee of dross until I reflect thine 
image in my life. When the scorching fires of trial rise 
high, I may cry out in the anguish of it, but do Thou 
perfect Thy will in me." 

Will He not do it? Surely, surely. It is a great 
crisis in our lives, truly, when, for the first time, we 
definitely and wholly, and forever, consecrate ourselves 
to God. It is a turning point. "Blessed are they who 
do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall 
be filled." How much more truly can I hunger after 
a thing than to be willing to see every earthly tie and 
interest perish, if need be, in order to obtain it? He will 
give it. I do not know what it will cost us. But it 
will cost no more than it must, and infinitely less than 



158 Thk Hope of His Causing. 

it will bring us. For I reckon that the sufferings 
of this present time are not worthy to be compared 
with the glory that shall be revealed in us. I do not 
know how long it will be in coming. But it will not 
be delayed a moment longer than it takes God's love 
and wisdom and power to accomplish it. 

Pride must go, ambition must perish, the love of 
the world must be burned out, impurity must be 
eradicated, self must be crucified. It is when we 
itemize the elements of dross that must be consumed 
that we begin to see how far-reaching is the conse- 
cration, and the prayer which we have made. What 
will it all involve? I know not, truly. That must 
depend much upon us, and the degree to which 
we are "exercised" by His chastenings. If we will 
be "zealous and repent" at His touch, we may escape 
much. I think there may be some who would see 
their fortunes turned into poverty, some would likely 
be tumbled from pedestals of human glory; some would 
probably have objects of worship torn from the heart 
in sore bereavements. But I am persuaded, brethren, 
that much will depend at last upon ourselves. I am 
sure that the chisel will never receive a needless stroke, 
that the fires will never be kindled above imperative 
need. 

But now we turn from this view to consider the 
soul-stirring fact, that the work will, in truth and 
fact, certainly be done in us, and that unspeakable 
riches of blessing in Christ Jesus await is fulfilment. 
ISTor, indeed, will they be wholly delayed. Day by 
day,stroke by stroke, will the precious object sought 
after be brought more and more into view. Every 
step will be into new light and joy and blessing. A 



Fruits of Entire Consecration. 159 

mighty transformation will be in progress, and its ad- 
vancement will become more and more perceptible as 
it proceeds, and its full accomplishment may be 
brought about very speedily, and through most unex- 
pected and improbable means. 

But, again, as has been heretofore said in another 
connection, this delay and protracted suffering is not a 
necessity that exists in the nature of things. It involves 
the absence of immediate realizing faith. Some there 
have been who seemed to step out at once into vic- 
torious spiritual life. Such seems to have been the 
case with Paul. His faith was mighty and prevailed. 
Many there are also' at this present time, who seem 
to have made very rapid progress to notable holiness 
of life. It is not therefore matter of necessary delay. 
But let us not expect to be spiritual without realizing 
faith in addition to entire consecration. We must 
put ourselves upon God. We must "walk by the 
Spirit." We must live a distinctively trust life. It is 
that, and nothing less, that involves victory. 

Is it objected that in this consecration all the work 
of sanctification is turned over to God? The charge 
is true. It is turned over to Him because, as we have 
tried to show in every chapter of this discussion, Jesus 
meant what He said when He declared of us, as he 
did also of His own humanity, that "we can do noth- 
ing." Because He hath thus taught us that He only 
can do it, and has abundantly promised that He will 
do it. Why should we not consciously deal with Him 
in this matter as a loving, wise Father, who regards 
our intelligence and volition. If I am to have any- 
thing to do in bringing about these results, then I 
can have no faith. I have no rational basis for faith. 



_i6o The Hope of His Causing. 

I have abandoned hope of self-help. I am warned 
of God in His word to do it. But if the work is 
to be done by Him, in His own way, by His own 
power, and despite weakness in me, I can have con- 
fidence, for I believe that He is able to do "exceeding 
abundantly above all we ask or think." 1 It is God's 
work; altogether His. He has put it into our hearts 
to "'think" and "ask" it, and He is abundantly able 
to perform it. 

Then let us even now, come up face to face with 
this great crisis. It involves all our future. It is a trans- 
action — an intelligent, definite, specific transaction in 
the divine life, a transaction in which we turn over 
the shaping of our lives to God, and in which He 
undertakes to shape them. Make the consecration, the 
living sacrifice, now. Do it deliberately, rationally, 
fully. There is no other privilege like this in your 
life. 

x Eph. iii. 20. 



U K PERFECT MAN • . ♦ THE STATURE OF 
THE FULNESS OF CHRIST/' 

And now we come to consider that since Jesus' life 
was a given life, and since we are called by the same 
God and Father that gave Him this life, to the same 
life, to "walk even as He walked/' to come "unto a 
perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the 
fulness of Christ/' to be "complete in Him/' x and have 
the same power pledged to our support, therefore it 
must follow, that what He was as a man, we can and 
should be as His disciples. What else is meant when 
Jesus says, "Every one that is perfect shall be as His 
master ?" 2 "It is enough for the disciple that he be 
as his Master, and the servant as his Lord." 3 What 
else can it be to "come to the stature of the fulness 
of Christ?" 4 It is an inference from the -whole Bible. 
It is a constant suggestion in the detailed life and 
words of Jesus. As His life as a man was a given, 
dependent life, so also, an,d for the same reason, is 
ours. No more so, no less so. He could do nothing, 
we can do nothing. Through God the Father, all 
things were possible to Him; through God the Son 
all things are possible to us. Why can we not be like 
Him? Cannot the same God who made His life as a 
man what it was, make ours to be like it? 

Was His human life perfect? So also, are we called 
to be perfect. "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your 



l Col. ii. 10. 2 Luke vi. 40. 3 Matt. x. 25. «Eph. i?« 13 * 
(161) — ii 



162 The Hope of His Calling. 

Father which is in heaven is perfect." 1 I do not 
understand that we are to be as perfect as the Father, 
but rather that as He is perfect in His being as God, 
we are to be perfect as spiritual children of God. Jesus 
said of his own humanity, "My Father is greater than 
I." 2 Let us not be frightened -at this word perfect. 
We cannot take it from the Bible. Neither can we ex- 
plain it away. We are called by Jesus to Christian per- 
fection, and He has not called us to an impossibility. 
Whatever differences may exist as to what He meant, 
no difference of opinion can rightly exist, as to the rea- 
sonableness of expecting that He can certainly give all 
that it does mean. We are not to be the authors of it. 
It is to be a gift. He is not looking to anything in us. 
He is expecting nothing of us. He does not require us 
to do something when, by His own declaration, He 
himself as a man could do nothing. He does not call us 
to attempt anything in inherent strength. What He 
calls us to, He gives, just as His own ]ife was given to 
Him. Therefore it is not a matter what we can do, but 
what He can do for us. 

As we have already seen, there is an important sense 
in which all Christians are made perfect in regenera- 
tion. The "new man" "created in righteousness and 
true holiness" "in the image of His Son," is perfect. 
But we are also called to a perfect walk, "to walk even 
as He walked." It is of this outward life or walk espec- 
ially that we now speak. If God at the instance of His 
own will, and by His own power and for His own glory, 
undertakes, as matter wholly of grace, or gift, to do a 
work in and for us, He should be credited with ability 



1 Matt. v. 48. 2 John xiv. 28. 



"A Pkrfect Man." 163 

to do a perfect work. And what less has He undertak- 
en than to save His people from their sins, to make 
them righteous and holy in Christ Jesus? What else is 
meant, or can be meant, when we are told that Christ, 
who knew no sin, was made sin for us, "that we might 
be made the righteousness of God in Him?" 1 When 
we are told again, He gave Himself for our sins, "that 
He might redeem us from all iniquity?" 2 And when 
we are told, "His own self bare our sins in His own 
body on the tree, that we being dead to sin, should live 
unto righteousnesss ?" 3 Was the sacrifice which He. 
made, that such a state might be brought within our' 
reach, a success ? As certainly as it was, it is our birth- 
right. It is a given life, as we have seen, and if so, why; 
can not we receive it? To say that it cannot be lived is 
to say that it cannot be given. God teaches it can be 
lived. Has not everything that can go to make an abso- 
lutely certain pledge of power sufficient to meet our 
every spiritual need to the end that we may truly "walk 
even as He walked" been expressly asssured to us in His 
word? 

The apostle Paul was a man, as weak within himself, 
so far as spiritual things are concerned, as any other 
man. He was like all Christians the object of Satan's 
hate, and was sorely buffeted by him. In this ^rouble 
He went to the Father and asked that it might be re- 
moved. Thrice he made the request. But God did not 
grant it. It was not the best for him. He answered 
him, however, in wonderful love. He said, "My grace 
is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect 
in weakness." 4 If any single declaration of favor 



*2 Cor. v. 21. 2 Titus ii. 14. si p e t. ii. 24. *2 Cor. xii. 9- 



164 The Hopk of His Calling. 

could cover the whole range of possible need, certainly 
this does. Of course, we understand that no prophecy 
of the scriptures is of any private interpretation. What 
is said to Paul is as truly said to all. What is it ? "My 
grace is sufficient." We may not know how much it 
means, hut this much would seem plain: it cannot mean 
less than that, it is sufficient to enable us to be all 
we are called to be; to do all we are called to do; to 
suffer all" we are called to< endure. Am I called to 
"walk even as He walked?" I can do it. His grace 
is sufficient to enable me. Am I very, very weak? 
ISTo matter about that. His "strength is made per- 
fect in weakness" itself. If through any possible com- 
bination of conditions it could become impossible for 
me to perfectly do his will, then His grace would not 
be sufficient, as nothing less than that can meet the 
measure of my obligations to Him. It is sufficient, 
therefore, not to enable us to be carnal Christians only, 
to be half-consecrated, doubting, troubled believers; 
to enable us to lead a sort of powerless life in service. 
ISTo. It is sufficient to give victo^ in conflict with 
Satan and sin; to fill and thrill the soul with the joys 
and fruits of the Spirit; to clothe with mighty power 
for service; to shed a heavenly radiance about the life 
that it may shine before men, to the glory of God the 
.Father. 

"God is able to make all grace abound towards you; 
that ye, always having all sufficiency in all tilings, may 
abound to every good work." 1 Here we have the same 
thought amplified. There is not sufficiency only, but 
"all sufficiency in all things" that we may "abound to 

*2Cor. ix. 8. 



"A Perfect Man." 165 

every good work." Take this scripture and point out 
a possible need that is not covered. In point of ne- 
cessities it takes in "all things;" in extent of blessing 
it is "all-sufficient;" as to equipage for service it em- 
braces "every good work;" in the matter of continu- 
ance it is to be with us "always." 

And so we find it actually exemplified in the life 
of Paul. He accepted it fully. He moved out in the 
power of it, and in the joy of it, to victorious and 
glorious life. Did he find it sufficient? Let him 
answer. "I can do all things through Christ which 
strengthened me." 1 What does he mean? He speaks 
as a Christian, and certainly cannot mean less than 
that he can do all things that go to constitute a per- 
fect Christian life. It means, it must mean, that life 
with him is victorious, triumphant, glorious. It 
means dominion over sin. It means that he is enabled 
to "walk even as He walked." He speaks from per- 
sonal experience. He tested the assurance, and speak- 
ing from experience and from inspiration, he declares 
that in his own life he found it to be true. 

Must we overcome the world? We can do it. "Ye 
are of God, little children, and have overcome them: 
because greater is he that is in you, than he that is 
in the world." 2 What does it mean? What can it 
mean but that Christ is in us to overcome the world 
for us? Just as surely as He is greater than he that 
is in the world, just that surely may we triumph 
through Him. Not a word is said about our strength 
or weakness. "He that is in us" is going to do the 
overcoming. "Our sufficiency is of God." 3 Here is 



1 Phil. iv. 13. 2 1 John iv. 4. 3 2 Cor. iii. 5. 



166 ^The Hopk of His Gaining. 

a peculiar alliance. God allied with man. Think 
what it means. Suppose I undertake to> protect a little 
sparrow against a pursuing hawk. It flies to me, and 
I propose to protect it. But the little frightened bird 
begins to say, "I am so very weak; I am not nearly 
so strong as my mate. I am one of the very weakest 
of sparrows. I am afraid we cannot resist the hawk." 
Foolish little sparrow. What can the trifling differ- 
ence between individuals of your feeble type of being 
have to do with it? What can the strongest of you 
do in such a contest more than the weakest? Nestle 
here in my bosom. That is all I want you to do. 
Think how ridiculous it must appear in heaven's view, 
when we poor, helpless creatures begin to compare our- 
selves among ourselves, to see whether God can pro- 
tect us. Tell me what the difference between the 
strength of one man and another can be in a contest 
between Him who has made and rules the worlds, and 
a mighty fallen spirit, who is the god of the whole 
world of lost men, taking them captive at his will. 
How absurd it would appear to us that a tiny gnat, so 
small as scarcely to attract the spider's attention, 
should begin to compare itself with other gnats in 
order to determine whether a man could deliver it 
from the web in which it is caught. And yet it is 
quite as reasonable as for us to begin to look at our- 
selves, and compare ourselves among ourselves to see 
whether "He that is in us" can deliver us from bond- 
age to "him that is in the world." "Our sufficiency is 
in God." "He that is in us is greater than he that is 
in the world," and for this reason only we can over- 
come the world. 

Hence we are told, "They which receive abundance 



"A Perfect Man." 167 

of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign 
in life by one, Jesus Christ." 1 If Satan overcomes 
and tramples upon my life, do I reign in life? Does 
the captive reign? If sin has dominion over me in my 
life, do I reign in it? What is it to reign? Here is 
one who is to reign. Who is it? The Christian. 
What is he to reign in? In his own life. What will 
he reign over? Its foes, of course. How is he to 
reign? "By one, Jesus Christ." Do we say we can- 
not overcome the world by Him, then the world 
must reign. Is it so that we cannot overcome 
sin in the flesh? Then sin must reign. Do we 
say we cannot overcome Satan? Then Satan is 
sovereign. Whoever overcomes will reign. It is a 
wonderful and a certain truth that we may reign in 
life by Jesus Christ. Did not Paul reign through 
Christ? Did not John? Cannot we? Then if we are 
to reign in life, when are we to do so? If it is to be 
wholly by Jesus Christ, may it not begin the instant 
our lives are wholly surrendered to Him, and we begin 
in fact and literally to "live by faith?" Why should 
there be delay? It is the life to which we are called. 
It is the purchase of His blood. He is in us to give 
sovereign power over the foes of life. He has bought 
us victory. We are called to reign, to reign here, to 
reign now, to "reign in life." 

Do we hunger and thirst after righteousness? We 
shall be filled. Christ "His own self bare our sins in 
His own body on the tree, that we being dead to sin, 
should live unto righteousness." 2 If it cannot be, the 
end for which He died is lost. He hath purchased it 



'Eom. v. 15. 2 lPet. ii. 24. 



168 Thk Hoph of His Calling. 

for us. He hath brought it within our reach. "His 
divine power hath given unto us all things that 'pertain 
unto life and godliness/' 1 Let us ponder this won- 
derful text. It tells us plainly that there is nothing 
that pertains unto "life or godliness" that is not "by 
divine power" "given unto us/ 7 But do we take the 
gift? Do we just believe that it is really true; that 
victory is ours by gift for the taking? Do we move- 
out in its power? Or, are we still straining in impo- 
tency to compass this end by the flesh? We will fail. 
"All things which pertain unto life and godliness" 
must be "given by divine power." It takes "divine 
power." Nothing less can avail us. Victory then,, 
must, as matter of necessity, be accepted as a gift. Let 
us cease from fruitless trying, and enter into power and 
triumph, by trusting and receiving. "Let us have grace 
whereby we may serve God acceptably." It it the only 
way. 

Is it deliverance from sin for which we groan? It 
is pledged to us, not in what has been quoted only, 
but specifically. "Sin shall not have dominion over 
you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace." 2 
We are no longer necessarily slaves to sin. We are 
delivered "from the power of Satan." Grace, mighty, 
all sufficient grace, has come to our rescue. It has 
conquered our foes for us. The flesh can no longer 
take us into "captivity to the law of sin in our mem- 
bers." "Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the 
lust of the flesh." 3 The Spirit of grace is sovereign. 
It comes to deliver. It is not that we grow stronger. 
Nay, verily. It is rather that we grow weak, that we 



1 2 Pet. i. 3. 2 Rom. vi. 14. 3 Gal. v. 16. 



"A Perfect Man." 169- 

come to see our nothingness, that we cease from self 
works, and lose our lives, that we may have Christ's 
life abound in us. Does Paul say, "I labored more 
abundantly than they all?" It is that he may add, 
"yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me." 1 
These scriptures must be stricken from the Bible 
before it can be shown that God's children are left 
with nothing better to be hoped for here, than a life 
of necessary weakness and sin. As truly as the Father 
held the human hand of Jesus, and upheld Him in 
His life, and filled Him with power to walk in holi- 
ness, just as true it is, that He has through abound- 
ing grace, made provision for us, that we too may 
"walk even as He walked." 

1 1 Cor. xv. 10. 



AS THE FATHER LOVED JESUS, SO HATH 
HE LOVED US- 

Let us not be deceived. There is a life of victory, 
of rest, of peace that passes understanding, of sweet 
and personal spiritual communion with the Holy Spirit; 
a life in which Christ lives and reigns, and in which 
sin has no dominion over us. As surely as we- are 
called to "walk even as He walked," "In His steps/' 
it is our privilege, by the same power that enabled 
Him to live this life, to be like Him. However far 
such a life may seem to be removed from us, let us 
recognize the truth, that it is nevertheless embraced 
in the "hope of His calling." Let us set for ourselves 
no lower ideaL Let us aim at this, and hope for it 
always, and rest content with nothing short of it. In- 
deed we cannot. To be in fact and truth a child of 
God involves an imperishable desire for holiness. We 
cannot be content in the carnal state. The Father in 
His love will not allow it. He would bring us closer 
to His bosom. 

Does anyone say, Jesus' life as a man is above us — 
that He was in a peculiar and exceptional sense the 
object of God's love, and hence we cannot be like Him? 
He himself denies it. He says of the Father, "Thou 
. . . hast loved them as Thou hast loved Me." 1 It 
was a peculiar love indeed, in being great, boundless, 
eternal; but not in the Sense of being greater towards 



1 John xvii. 23. 
(170) 



So Hath He Loved Us. 171 

Him than it is towards us. This is rendered yet 
more certain, if possible, when Jesus says of His 
own love towards us, "As the Father hath loved 
Me, so have I loved you." x He spake it not as a. 
man, hut as God the Son. It is the same love; the 
same in tenderness, the same in intensity, the same 
in constancy, the same in its length and breadth and 
and depth and height, the same in its eternal insepara- 
bleness from us. 

Does not the apostle say so, in language that must have 
been designed to compass every contingency, that can 
arise in time or eternity, when he declares, "Neither 
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor 
powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor 
height, nor depth, nor any other other creature, shall 
be able to separate us from the love of God, in Christ 
Jesus?" 2 

It is the same love he bore the Son — the same — His 
love "in Christ Jesus." It is wonderful, but it is 
literally true, that just as impossible as it was to sepa- 
rate God's love from His Son Jesus Christ, just as 
impossible it is to separate His love from us, if we have 
taken Him as our life. Jesus says the Father loves us 
■"as He loved Him." Does He? If He does, then 
indeed is it the same love? It unites Him to the one 
as certainly and as indissolubly as it did to the other. 

What does it all mean? "What can it mean, but 
that the humanity of Jesus is intended to reveal to us 
in unmistakable demonstration the relation which 
every child of God by regeneration sustains to the 
Father. He was the elder brother. He was the type 



1 John xv. 9. 2 Rom. viii. 38, 39. 



172 The Hope of His Calling. 

and pattern of a human son of God, such as. each 
saved soul becomes in the new birth. As God loved 
Him, so precisely, doth He love every one who is 
"conformed to His image." All the power He man- 
ifested towards Him, He will under like conditions, 
and need, manifest towards us. All the blessings he 
bestowed upon Him as a man, He holds ready to be- 
stow upon us, as " joint heirs with Him" of the same 
love. In His relations to the "Son of man" He simply 
exemplifies His relations to every son of man who 
accepts His love and salvation, As truly, and in the 
same sense, that He was the Father and God of Jesus 
as a man, He is also our Father and God. "I ascend unto 
My Father and your Father; and to My God, and your 
God." 1 As the Father, who always heard Jesus, who 
was always with Him, who kept His heart in perfect 
peace, who clothed Him with a wisdom that con- 
founded the adversaries, and a power that overcame 
the world, and every form of temptation, that gave 
to Him a life without spot; the Father, who fulfiled 
His own will and purposes in His life, and hath 
exalted Him above all principality and power, and 
every name that is named both in earth and heaven; 
as the Father loved Jesus, so doth He love us. It is 
not fancy. It is not inference. It is not strained 
interpretation. It is the most obvious meaning of 
the plain declaration of Jesus himself. 

It was a wonderful love truly. It compassed time 
and eternity — the world that now is and that which 
is to come. How great was it? We cannot know. It 
passes knowledge. But we do know it supplied His 

1 John xx. 17. 



So Hath Hk Loved Us. 173 

every spiritual want, it sustained Him in every degree 
of trial, it held His hand and kept Him in perfect 
Holiness, it touched and blessed every moment of his 
days and nights. It was perfect love. How well does 
He love us? Even as He loved Him. 

If it was by infinite love He hath appointed Jesus 
"heir of all things/" even by the same love, hath He 
made us "heirs of God and joint-heirs" with Him. 
Heirs of "all things," whether "the world, or life, or 
death, or things present, or things to come; all are 
yours; and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." 1 Ah, 
we cannot take it in. "All is ours." The Father hath 
said it. Ours here, ours now. Are they right things of 
"the world?" They are ours; are they things that per- 
tain "to life and godliness?" by His "divine power" He 
hath given them unto us; are they things that conquer 
"death?" they are ours; are they things that arise from 
exigencies of the "present?" they are ours; are they 
"things to come" — things that secure and crown the 
future? they are ours. "All are ours." Let us not 
scandalize our Father by going emaciated and lean for 
the bread of life, when he hath at such cost brought 
abundance to the door of every heart; by going naked 
and destitute, when a white robe of righteousness in 
Christ Jesus hath been prepared for us; by subserviency 
to sin, when Ave are called to "reign in life" by Jesus 
Christ; by being cast down and distressed with doubt 
and gloom and fear, when we are called to joy unutter- 
able and full of glory, to a peace that passes knowledge, 
to a rest that brings heavenly and unbroken calm, to a 
perfect love which casteth out fear. Oh, ye heirs of all 



1 1 Cor. iii. 21-23. 



174 T H 3 Hope of His Caujng. 

things that pertain to the life that now is, and to that 
which is to come, ye children of the most high God, 
lift up your heads. He hath called ns with a wonder- 
ful calling. Let us believe Him. He hath called us 
to power, to honor, to holiness, and to glory. Let us 
rejoice in the boundlessness of the mercy He hath 
shown us. Let us ring out songs of victory and praise. 
Let us clap our glad hands. Let us give Him glory. 
The Father loves us. As he hath loved the Son, so 
hath He loved us. 

"Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abun- 
dantly above all that we ask or think, according to 
the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory in 
the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world 
without end. Amen." 



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